by Ben Counter
Irixa
Ben Counter
Parchments covered in words of devotion hung everywhere, illuminated prayers from the hands of Terra’s own scribes. They had spent lifetimes hunched over their work, lifetimes scratching out the words of long-dead saints with quills carved from the skulls of penitents, ink distilled from the blood of martyrs. Holiness bled from the parchments, black ink turning red as it dripped onto the floor of the Phalanx’s war archive.
The ritual decontamination of the space station would take years. The evil done to it by the culmination of a daemon’s plan could not simply be washed away. It had to be prayed out of existence, scoured like a wicked man’s sins out of the steel of the Phalanx until it was fit to fly as a flagship of Mankind again. Teams of Imperial Fist Chapter serfs scrubbed the contaminated decks with holy water while Ecclesiarchy priests were suffered to intrude into the Chapter’s world to bless the wargear that had seen the presence of the daemon. But the Phalanx was still a warship, and war did not pause to let its combatants cleanse themselves of the sin that it brought. The Phalanx still had to serve; the Imperial Fists still had to fight.
The parchments waved in the breeze generated by the air recyclers as Captain Lysander entered the war archive. His own wargear, his Terminator armour and the great storm shield currently strapped to his back, gleamed after the day’s maintenance rites. He looked less like a man and more like one of the statues of heroes that lined many of the corridors of the Phalanx, memorials to long-dead Imperial Fists whose acts of heroism had earned them a memorial in the heart of the Chapter. His shaven head looked like it had been chewed up and spat out, but his features had retained the nobility and focus that marked him out as a leader by sight alone.
The novices in the war archive seemed to shrink when they saw him. They were barely out of the earlier stages of physical transformation that would eventually make them Space Marines, and had yet to serve as Scouts or as apprentices to the Chapter’s Techmarines and Librarians. They rarely saw the senior members of the Chapter, let alone stood before one of them as students. For the time being they were still men, not yet members of the Adeptus Astartes, not yet free of the weaknesses that the Emperor had created the Space Marines to overcome.
‘You know who I am,’ said Lysander. ‘And you know why I am here. You are the future of the Chapter. Some of you will one day serve as Imperial Fists, perhaps under me in the First Company. One of you may even wear these laurels as a captain, though I will not let that happen without you first understanding the meaning of war.’
He looked from one face to another. They stood in ranks, facing the tactical display table that took up a good chunk of the war archive’s floorspace. Each novice had been picked as a youth from one of a hundred worlds the Imperial Fists Chaplains had visited, according to the most exacting standards of aggression, fearlessness and physical potential. Now they looked like children compared with the monster that was Lysander.
‘War,’ said Lysander, ‘is sacrifice.’
He waved a hand and the mimetic alloys of the table’s surface reconfigured themselves into a complex topographical map, rising up to form the peaks and valleys of a rugged snarl of mountains. A holo-unit mounted on the ceiling cast hundreds of glowing symbols across the map. Cylinders among the mountain slopes denoted artillery pieces. Airstrips dotted the tops of foothills. Dozens of unit markings swarmed around the valleys and the lower slopes, various colours depicting the many sides of a great, confused battle.
‘What do you see?’ demanded Lysander.
‘I see Valacian Pass,’ said one voice.
Lysander looked at the novice. His jet black hair contrasted with the red of his irises and the greyish tone of his skin. An underhiver, one of a subterranean race of scavengers and gang killers from some Emperor-forsaken hive city’s depths.
‘Novice Apeyo,’ said Lysander. ‘You memorise the Precepts Militant well. But that is not enough. What does Valacian Pass mean to you?’
Apeyo swallowed. ‘Captain Siculus led a force of battle-brothers in evacuating civilians from the Draven Mask rebels. The rebels were engaged in their own war with the Scarlet Moon cultists who…’
‘No,’ said Lysander. ‘The words of the Precepts Militant are well known to me. I have no need of them. I asked you what the battle means.’
Lysander was met with silence that seemed to go on forever until one novice cleared his throat.
‘Novice Arnobius, you alone wish to speak?’ said Lysander.
Arnobius wore the blue-trimmed habit of the Chapter’s Librarium, its hood covering his shaven scalp and the patches of regrafted skin on his face. Behind the scarred but unassuming face burned a mind that might – just might – have the strength to serve as a battle-psyker in the Imperial Fist ranks.
‘Siculus,’ began Arnobius, ‘had a choice.’
‘Enemy air!’ called out Scout-Sergeant Noctis over the vox-channel, and a split second later Captain Siculus heard the scream of the engines overhead.
Ahead was the vast sweep of Valacian Pass, a deep valley cutting through the red stone mountains. From Siculus’s vantage point in the hatch of his Damocles command vehicle, he could see the great train of refugees choking the entrance to the pass, marshalled by priests of the Ecclesiarchy crying out prayers and appeals for calm. Tens of thousands of them were making the march through the pass to the landing fields on the other side, where they could be evacuated from this world and from the rebel forces encroaching on its cities.
They were Ministorum acolytes and Mechanicus fabricators, Administratum clerks, medicae surgeons and orderlies, the law-scribes of the Arbites and guards from the prisons. The Adept class of Key Thol, the latest city to find itself in the path of the Draven Mask.
The people heard the engines, too. They knew what they meant. Siculus could see the panic running through them.
‘Cover!’ shouted Siculus into the vox. ‘Noctis, you are Squad Iason’s eyes!’
The craft screaming down the valley was shaped like a dagger, a cockpit blistering up from the tip of its blade. Siculus glimpsed the face of the pilot, a blank, chromed mask with a single eye drilled into it, as the fighter aimed its nose down the valley and sprayed fire from the guns mounted on its swept-back wings.
A chain of impacts rippled across the valley sides, spiralling down through the massed civilians. Bodies were thrown in the air, screams just audible over the engines as the fighter ripped overhead.
Siculus swung down into the interior of the Damocles. The Damocles was based on the Rhino APC, giving up most of its passenger capacity for boosted comms equipment that let the Imperial Fists force keep vox-contact through the interference caused by the mountainous terrain. Tactical readouts told Siculus that his force was scattering into cover. He had Scout Squad Noctis and the Devastator Squad of Sergeant Iason, along with his own command squad now sheltering in the rocky debris at the foot of the valley wall.
‘It’s a Red Fang,’ said Techmarine Hamoskon. The Techmarine was crammed into the back of the Damocles where there was barely room for the servo-arms folded up around his body. ‘It’ll cut those people to ribbons.’
‘Iason!’ ordered Siculus. ‘Take it down!’
The sound of gunfire hammered closer. A lance of light spitted the Damocles, shearing through between Hamoskon and Siculus. Siculus threw himself backwards as the Damocles was thrown into the air and he felt the shockwave slam into him, driving the inside of the side hatch into the back of his head.
He was out for a moment. His senses swam back into focus and he was being dragged from the burning wreckage by Hamoskon, the Techmarine using his servo-arms to haul the captain behind him.
Siculus rolled to his feet. He went through the battle-drills in his mind, ticking off his limbs and senses. He was not ba
dly hurt and could fight on. The rite completed, Siculus turned his attention to his own squad, who were running from cover to take him to shelter.
They were his closest brothers, those who had fought at his side since he had been able to call himself an Imperial Fist. One man from each squad he had fought in now wore the red helmet of Siculus’s company, and made up his own honour guard.
Brother Achaikos pulled Siculus into cover. ‘It’s coming back for another pass.’
‘Open fire!’ replied Siculus. ‘Keep his eyes off Iason!’
‘Aye, my captain!’ replied Achaikos. He aimed his bolter at the sky and the other six brothers of the command squad did the same, stitching rapid bolter fire up at the silvery dart now wheeling back around to point down the valley.
Siculus could see Scout-Sergeant Noctis, kneeling out of cover watching the enemy fighter through his magnoculars. The sun glinted off the bionic eye of Sergeant Iason as he took the lascannon from the battle-brother beside him.
He was going to take the shot himself. Arrogance, maybe, or simply the knowledge that Iason was the best shot in the company. It mattered not in that moment as long as the shot was true.
More fire spat down from the sky. It blew shards of stone from the valley sides. The civilians were wheeling now, a melee without head or tail, rushing in every direction at once trying to find a way out from the valley that wasn’t there. People were dying there, blown apart by the fire or crushed underfoot. People who were Siculus’s responsibility.
The lascannon fired. A pulse of glittering crimson sliced one of the fighter’s wings off. The fighter kept its course for half a second and then one side dropped, throwing it into a spin that arrowed off-course.
It slammed into the side of the valley in a bloom of red-black smoke. Shards of stone fell in a dark hail over the panicking people. The sound of the impact boomed back and forth across the mountains, shaking snow from the highest peaks.
‘It will not be alone,’ said Siculus. ‘The Draven Mask have the skies of this world, but they have plenty on the ground, too. Noctis! My brothers! Advance, and keep your eyes high!’
Siculus ran past the wreckage of the Damocles towards the edge of the crowd. ‘Citizens!’ he shouted. ‘Listen! The enemy wishes you dead, but it will not find you here! The Emperor is with you, for we are the Emperor’s hand, and we will deliver you! Carry the wounded and leave the dead, obey your priests, and follow us through this valley! We are the Imperial Fists, they who stood at the battlements of Terra and dared the Enemy to attack, and we will not let you down! On this you have my word!’
Perhaps it was Siculus’s words that had an effect, or perhaps the Ministorum preachers got the majority of the crowd back under control. The heaving of the crowd subsided as the people began to move again down the valley, stepping around the heaps of broken bodies and smouldering craters. Siculus could hear the weeping and the wailing of those who had seen their loved ones die, and the crying-out of the wounded. Some were carried on the shoulders of companions; others dragged themselves along or limped in lopsided groups, leaning on one another for support.
‘I have eyes on,’ came a vox from Scout-Sergeant Noctis. His squad was moving rapidly down the valley, scrambling through the rocks that lined the valley side. Siculus scanned along the slope and saw the dark dots swarming there – light infantry, skilled and fearless, at home in the unforgiving terrain of the mountains. They were typical of the Draven Mask. They had infested this place, and now the call had come for them to crawl out from their holes and feast on the weak who limped past beneath them.
‘Noctis, hold and pin them down! Iason, move into position! My brothers, with me!’
‘Wait,’ voxed Noctis. ‘North-west, the second peak. I see him.’
Siculus looked to the north-west. There a shattered peak, like a broken fang, rose among the great flinty slabs of the range. Some ancient cataclysm had broken off its pinnacle and sent deep fissures running down its height.
There, among the broken, scorched rock, stood a coven of figures, their banners and cloaks waving in the cold wind. The augmented vision of a Space Marine could pick them out in every detail.
Seven of them stood there. Six were men, or at least had once been men. They wore plate armour looted from the tombs of this planet, forged into delicate scrollwork now bolted to bulging, mutated muscle. The weapons they bore had been taken from tombs and museums, blades, shields and lances from an empire that had died thousands of years before. Their faces were sagging knots of ragged skin and every one had put out his eyes, the raw, bleeding sockets the badges of their faith. For they had gouged them out at the order of the seventh.
The seventh was the Eternal Guide, the Light in the Darkness, Lord of the Beatifying Fire, Captain Cohpran Vaa’eigoloth of the Emperor’s Children.
He wore a cloak of caged flame, roiling around his shoulders and surrounding him in a heat haze. His armour was that of a Space Marine in bright polished purple, gilded panels bearing prayers to his own power and beauty. One shoulder panel took the form of a bird’s wing, its feathers picked out in pearls and rubies. Emeralds clustered on his chest in the shape of a planet surrounded by eight stars. His helmet was a featureless gold cowl save for the eyeslits, and on its brow sat a crown of silver dripping with gemstones of every colour. In one hand he carried the Corruptor Prince, a daemon bound into the shape of a staff Vaa’eigoloth had taken from the cooling body of Governor Calx of the Subdamnas Sector. In the other he carried a shield he had made from Autarch Ysandrion of Deldrenath Craftworld. The Autarch was still alive and his face, set into the puzzle of body parts making up the shield’s front, wept with pain.
Siculus froze. A Space Marine should never have allowed events to shock him out of his thoughts, but the sudden appearance of the Traitor Legion captain had thrown him. For a moment his mind was full of nothing but the vision of Vaa’eigoloth. This was the Emperor’s Children captain who had looted a thousand relics of the Emperor’s life and assembled them into a vessel for the daemon that still rampaged through the Ghoul Stars. He had raised a vast army of rebels, mutants and pirate vermin, solely to march them into a volcano so he could hear the laughter of his god as they burned. His armour had been forged in a pile of burning pilgrims and quenched in the tears of their orphans.
Siculus tore his eyes away.
‘We can take him,’ said Achaikos beside him. ‘He has the Six Furies with him but we are a match for them, if we move now and falter not.’
Squad Iason had seen the newcomer too. Already their heavy weapons were turning towards the shattered peak.
‘Captain?’ voxed Iason. ‘Your orders?
‘Hold,’ said Siculus.
‘If we take him down now, whatever plan he has for this world will not come to pass.’
‘And we will abandon these people,’ replied Siculus. ‘A planet’s worth of the faithful. Not to mention that Vaa’eigoloth may well be here solely to divert us from our mission.’
‘It matters not,’ said Achaikos. ‘The mission will be forgotten if we bring back his head.’
‘I agree,’ voxed Sergeant Iason. ‘It is clear to me on which path the greatest glory lies.’
Siculus paused. He saw himself carrying Vaa’eigoloth’s scorched helm back to the Phalanx and seeing it mounted as a trophy of war. And he saw the valley ahead of him choked with the refugees’ bodies.
‘I care nothing for glory,’ replied Siculus. ‘Iason, advance and engage at range. Noctis, support us.’ He turned to Achaikos and the other Imperial Fists of his command squad. ‘You are with me,’ he said. ‘Down the valley. Get these people to safety. Those are my orders.’
The Imperial Fists force followed the mass of refugees down the valley, Iason’s guns already hammering fire into the positions of the hidden Draven Mask rebels. Siculus looked back, only once, towards the shattered peak.
Vaa’eigoloth was turning away, perhaps in disappointment, perhaps in satisfaction. And Siculus could not help but wonder
if, beneath that faceless helm, there was a smile.
‘A choice,’ said Captain Lysander. He looked between the faces of the novices. They were waiting for the object of the lesson, for Lysander to explain to them what they should have learned. ‘Arnobius?’
‘He was wrong,’ said Arnobius.
‘Explain, novice.’
‘Siculus had the chance to eliminate an enemy of Mankind. By the time the Imperium brought Vaa’eigoloth to battle he had gone between half a dozen more worlds and done countless evils on them all. All that could have been avoided if Siculus had killed him at Valacian Pass.’
‘I see,’ said Lysander. ‘Speak up, novices. Those who cannot express their own opinion in my presence will never dare walk into the guns of the enemy. Speak up.’
‘I disagree,’ said a novice near the back of the room. Novice Kogen was from a world of scattered islands and vicious sea monsters, where bronzed men fought kraken from the shores under two blazing suns. His skin was the colour of copper and tiny pebbles had been inserted under his brow and temples, framing his face in a scarified pattern. ‘Siculus’s mission was clear and he followed it through to the end.’
‘The loss of the adepts would have been regrettable,’ said Arnobius, ‘but that would mean nothing compared to the elimination of Vaa’eigoloth.’
‘But without the faith and trust of the Imperium’s people,’ replied Kogen, ‘the Imperial Fists can do nothing. If they cannot live in hope that we can deliver them, they will be without faith, and the enemy has his roots in the ranks of the faithless.’
‘There is no statue of Siculus among the heroes on the Phalanx,’ countered Apeyo. ‘With a kill like Vaa’eigoloth he would surely be commemorated as a hero. He would have brought great glory to the Chapter!’
‘And what more evil could the heralds of Chaos have done with a population devoid of hope and faith?’ said Kogen. ‘More than one Champion of the Warp could ever do, I would wager.’
‘I would take you up on that wager, Kogen!’ snapped Apeyo.