Throneworld

by Guy Haley

  Inside was the naked corpse of an ork. The smell of it was staggering, and she switched to breathing through her mouth. A fat pink tongue lolled between dagger teeth of yellow ivory. Its red eyes were half closed, lifeless and dull. Massive craters pocked its flesh, and the left arm was missing. Bolt-wounds. She stepped back, letting the flow of servitors pass her as she moved back up the line to the container. Inside were dozens of shelves arrayed like bunks, transit webbing hanging loose over the sides where they had been emptied. At the rear of the container a refrigeration unit blinked running lights from red to green and back again. White vapour, smelling strongly of methalon, pooled on the floor.

  Yendl ran through the calculations in her head, balancing up the size of the warehouse with the number of containers and transit cradles… She drew in a sharp breath.

  Over ten thousand orks.

  ‘What by the Throne do they want ten thousand dead orks for?’ she whispered. She had to inform Vangorich. She had to make contact.

  Yendl sneaked through the comings and goings of servitors. There were so many she almost did not recognise the skitarii for what they were until it was too late. So much metal melded to flesh. Telling the autonomous servants of the priesthood apart from their slaves was nigh-on impossible.

  At the last second she noticed them, diving behind a container as a bullet buzzed past her face, setting her internal rad sensors screaming.

  ‘Halt! Halt! Unauthorised personnel, halt!’ screeched a harsh metallic voice. Iron feet pounded the plascrete of the warehouse floor, coming at her from both sides of the container stack.

  The first skitarius found an energy blast waiting for it. Yendl had studied the endless variations of the cybernetic warriors exhaustively, and knew the weak points of each. It was thrown backwards by the blast of her pistol, an exotic relic of the great Heresy war, tangling the legs of the one coming behind it. Yendl was already moving backwards, directly into the path of those coming up the other side. She sidestepped the next bullet coming for her, a movement that brought her around the barrel of the skitarius’ gun. She grabbed the stock, preventing the cyborg from repositioning its weapon, shooting the one behind with her pistol, then the one behind that. The gears of the skitarius’ mechanical arms clicked with effort to push Yendl aside, but her slender augmetic arms were supplemented with hidden fibre bundles, and her stance was immovable.

  Two further skitarii rounded the rear of the container. The first’s visor met her elbow, driving shattered glass and metal into its brain. The second got a bullet from the gun of its comrade when Yendl pivoted on the spot and yanked hard, mashing the trapped skitarius’ finger against the trigger. Only that one remained. She wrenched the gun away, threw the skitarius aside and shot it three times, in the chest, head and reactor unit.

  She made sure they were all dead and their datacores shattered, then she was away.

  Alarms rang. Before anyone could respond, Yendl had gone.

  A steady procession of foot traffic flowed along the Trans-Tharsis Highway’s pedestrian strip. The lights of giant vehicles blurred past in a roar of colour and sound.

  Clementina Yendl arranged her new disguise, a robe taken from a menial now dead and never to be found. She adjusted her posture, becoming once again the low-ranking adept, her augmetics adopting the twisted pose of bionics more hindrance than help. Transformed, she slipped from a side door in an unassuming block and joined the crowds. She had gone less than three kilometres before she became aware of the servo-skull following her some metres behind. Yendl was too well practised to reveal she had noticed. She picked up speed. The skull did likewise, a constant presence amid the confusing whirl of aerial constructs going about their duty.

  She selected an ambush site. A one-man lift ascended to a gallery hanging from the lower floors of a kilometre-long hab complex. A covered walkway led off into the building there. She ascended the lift, and went down the alley. Sure enough, the skull followed. A junction beckoned, and she took an abrupt left.

  When the skull came, she was waiting with her cloak, whirling it out like a net and catching the device mid-flight. She hauled it to earth, her strength overcoming its anti-gravity field and bouncing it from the floor. She wrestled it into submission, and freed it from the cloak. A standard model, bronze-plated ancient bone, long tendrils of interface cabling hanging from its rear. By the standards of Mars, wholly unremarkable, and unarmed. It stopped struggling.

  ‘Message, message, message,’ gargled the skull, its glass eyes flashing.

  ‘Speak,’ said Yendl.

  A click sounded as a vox-feed engaged. ‘I have been searching for you everywhere.’

  ‘My well-placed friend.’

  ‘The very same,’ said Urquidex. He sounded agitated.

  ‘I hope for your sake this feed is encrypted.’

  ‘Of course!’ he snapped. ‘But we must be brief. The privacy of this channel cannot be guaranteed for long. One of your colleagues has met with an unfortunate end and the secrecy of your cell is compromised. It will take the diagnostic covens a little time to retrieve the information from the cortex – organics are so much less forgiving than mechanisms – but they will.’

  ‘She is dead? I had guessed,’ said Yendl.

  ‘Yes. I am sorry.’

  ‘Sorrow helps nobody.’

  ‘I have other news,’ said Urquidex. ‘The Fabricator General has embarked on new work. I do not know what. I am attempting to find out.’

  ‘Orks,’ said Yendl.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thousands of ork corpses are being delivered–’

  ‘To the laboratoria of Pavonis Mons?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Yendl. ‘I have come from there. I was seen.’

  ‘Disaster!’ said Urquidex.

  Yendl let the servo-skull free. It bobbed level with her eyes.

  ‘Tell me something I am unaware of,’ she said. ‘Tell me what they want with so many dead orks.’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Urquidex. ‘Kubik told me himself, Magos Van Auken heads a work as important as the Grand Experiment.’ He paused. ‘I delay all I can, but cannot do so indefinitely. I cannot stop the Grand Experiment.’ A faint crackle sounded on the connection. ‘Danger comes. I must go. Stay alive. I will attempt contact soon.’

  The skull flew away, becoming one among hundreds hurrying through the tunnel. Yendl lost sight of it quickly. She was not so naive as to believe she could disappear so easily.

  Fifteen

  Lord Guilliman’s decree

  The day after the attack on the ork moon, the Space Marines of the Last Wall prepared to receive Lord Guilliman Udin Macht Udo with as much ceremony and pomp as if he had in truth been the primarch himself.

  They waited on the embarkation deck of the Abhorrence in full wargear. Udo’s magnificently decorated shuttle pierced the integrity field of the portal majoris and came in to land upon the golden aquila painted specially for the purpose at the centre of the deck. The landing ramp descended, disgorging fifty Lucifer Blacks in gleaming wargear. They jogged down an avenue of Space Marines made up from members of every company of every Chapter in the Last Wall. Fists Exemplar stood with Black Templars beside Iron Knights. Crimson Fists waited proudly alongside Excoriators. With these representatives of each Chapter, there were nigh-on one thousand Space Marines present on the deck.

  At the end of this aisle lined by ceramite stood the commanders of the Chapters: the captains and Chaplains of every company, headed by their leaders High Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars, Chapter Master Issachar of the Excoriators, Chapter Master Quesadra of the Crimson Fists, Chapter Master Thane of the Fists Exemplar, First Captain Verpall of the Iron Knights, and Koorland, Chapter Master and last member of the Imperial Fists.

  The Lucifer Blacks stamped shining boots in thunderous march down the ranks of Space Marines. They spread themselves out along the length
of the way from Udo’s ship to the Chapter Masters until they formed a cordon one man wide. Then they rotated ninety degrees to face into the avenue, their final stamp echoing away into the empty spaces of the embarkation deck. For all the Lucifer Blacks’ stern martial polish, there was something faintly ridiculous about this show of defence, as if all of them together could possibly hope to halt even ten of the transhuman warriors, should they decide to kill the Lord Guilliman.

  Koorland pushed the implied insult to the back of his mind. More politics. Udo was making a show of his authority.

  To a fanfare of silver clarions, Udin Macht Udo came down the ramp of his ship, surrounded by attendants and high-ranking officials of the Adeptus Terra. The train of his cloak was held from the ground by six blind auto-praisers whispering ceaseless prayers to the Emperor. Udo wore all the panoply of his office, a rich uniform stiff with brocade and frogging, a chest full of honours and medallions. Servo-skulls buzzed out in a cloud over his entourage, and swooped off in every direction. Cyber-cherubs came after, four spreading out to hold a cloth of gold two metres over the Lord Guilliman, two more swinging censers which billowed oily blue, perfumed smoke.

  This parade came to a halt before the Chapter Masters. The sons of Dorn got down on one knee, and bowed their heads.

  Udo clapped his hands and smiled.

  ‘Rise, rise, loyal servants of the Imperium! You, the mighty sons of the Emperor, return to your Father in the time of need, and you have not disappointed Him.’

  The Space Marines got to their feet, dwarfing the Lord Guilliman. Unperturbed, Udo motioned for a cybernetic servant bearing a velvet-covered tray, on which were arrayed multiple honour badges. A hooded adept came after, and began to clamp the badges to the Chapter Masters’ armour. ‘In recognition, this mark is designated the Defence of Terra. You shall be permitted to display it upon your armours and banners for evermore.’

  The adept approached Koorland gingerly. With unsteady hands he placed the award upon the bottom corner of his pauldron. The man was shaking with fear. Koorland looked over the head of the adept at the crowd of servants behind Udo. There were four auto-scribes, quill arms scratching down an account of the event upon spools of paper spilling from chest boxes. There were others making records – servitors with pict-capture units for eyes and vox-thieves for mouths. Several of the servo-skulls hovered in place, glass eye-lenses fixed on the Space Marines. They watched also, doubtless capturing the ceremony from other angles.

  Another way to show power, thought Koorland. He comes aboard our ships, a statement of ownership. He wondered how many times these images would be displayed on the pict screens of the Palace, in places like the Fields of Winged Victory, in the innumerable squares and plazas of Terra. How many times the news-criers would shout out Udo’s generosity, how many priests would read of how the lords of six Space Marine Chapters demonstrated their allegiance to Terra on their knees before Udin Macht Udo.

  ‘And now, brave defenders of the Imperium,’ Udo said, holding his hands high in seeming blessing. ‘We must convene a council of war. The ork is not yet defeated.’

  A projection of Terra rotated lazily over a chart desk set into the middle of the strategium table, the ork moon its unwelcome companion. Through a long galleried window the same scene could be seen in reality. The gathered might of five Chapters sailed in tight formation around the moon. Wings of interdiction fighters shone bright as polished badges as they swooped over it, their numbers and flight paths reproduced as graphical ideograms over the light image.

  The Chapter Masters sat around the massive table. Udin Macht Udo occupied a tall throne at its head, built up so that he might look the Space Marines in the eye. Behind him a broad-winged bronze aquila glowered down from the wall, its one-eyed glare mirroring Udo’s own.

  ‘Those vessels taken from the Merchant Fleets that we could not retake, we have destroyed,’ Quesadra was saying. ‘Our combined forces inflicted significant damage throughout the moon. Our estimates are that two-thirds or more of the orks were killed. The outer surface has been stripped of weaponry. For the time being, the moon poses no significant threat. Chapter Master Koorland’s expedition into the moon’s core damaged a device that proved to be a long-range teleport array. Without it, the orks cannot reinforce themselves. They are cut off. This intelligence is of the highest significance for the prosecution of the war. The moon–’

  ‘The moon is not only an attack vessel, but a form of spatial gateway. I was informed by Fabricator General Kubik this morning,’ said Udo dismissively. ‘It has been noted. New strategies are being formulated. The question for now is, was it permanently disabled?’

  ‘We do not think so,’ said Thane. ‘The power supply was severely damaged, but deep auspex scans show continued power fluctuations. The possibility remains that they may repair it.’

  ‘And then the problem will be as it was before, hundreds of thousands of orks moving in to directly attack Terra,’ said Issachar. ‘The capabilities of the gateway are unknown. They may be able to bring in replacement materiel and ships. The throneworld remains vulnerable.’

  ‘There remains only one solution,’ said Koorland. ‘We must attack again.’

  An aide handed Udo a data-slate. He squinted at it a while, leaving the Chapter Masters to wait, then handed it back.

  ‘No,’ he said forcefully. ‘Second Captain Koorland of the Daylight Wall Company, you will not attack again. Not yet.’

  ‘We will leave it there?’ said Bohemond incredulously. ‘The Last Wall has been called! We come to Terra’s aid, and you would deny the Emperor this victory?’

  ‘Lord Bohemond,’ said Koorland. ‘Please. Hear the Lord Guilliman out.’

  ‘Listen to the second captain, he has some wisdom,’ said Udo.

  Issachar’s face darkened. ‘Koorland is a Chapter Master of the Adeptus Astartes, Lord Guilliman,’ he said. ‘He sits here with us in brotherhood. It pains me to remind one of your exalted rank.’

  ‘I do not require your assistance,’ said Udo. ‘Koorland is no Chapter Master. By the customs of his own order, if not directly nominated by the passing commander, potential successors to the office of Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists must be selected by the consensus of the Chapter’s Chaplains and wall captains, and those favoured with nomination voted for. In Koorland’s case neither of these criteria have been met.’

  ‘How could they be? He is the only one,’ growled Bohemond. ‘The last Imperial Fist.’

  ‘Would the same stand if he were the last surviving neophyte?’ said Udo. ‘I think not.’

  ‘He has been recognised as Chapter Master by us, the lords of the other sons of Dorn,’ said Issachar. ‘He has led us in battle. He is worthy.’

  Udo spread his hands, neither dismissing or conceding the point. ‘Far be it from me to deny the will of so many mighty heroes. Terra could conceivably allow such a selection, if it proved to be in the best interests of the Imperium.’

  ‘The affairs of the Adeptus Astartes are our own!’ said Bohemond.

  ‘But they are not, High Marshal,’ said Udo patiently. ‘They are yours as far as any of the other adepta’s. You are, first and foremost, servants and subjects of the God-Emperor, Lord of all Mankind – a species of which, although your alterations perhaps stretch the classification, you are still a member, High Marshal. Your Chapter forgets this fact a little too often. Your fleets are unaccountable, rumours persist of an excess of warriors under your command, and your actions have stirred up previously quiet xenos races too many times.’

  ‘We serve the Emperor,’ said Bohemond, ‘not bureaucrats. Ours is a sacred mission.’

  ‘We are the agents of the Emperor’s will,’ countered Udo. ‘Not some officio to be ignored.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Your wilfulness gives us pause. This gathering of yours was neither called for nor authorised. Now we have three thousand Space Marines in orbit over the Golden
Throne itself. What are we to make of that?’

  ‘In the face of your incompetence we save the throneworld, and you come to accuse us of treachery?’ said Quesadra in disgust.

  ‘You are the largest force of Space Marines assembled since the Heresy,’ said Udo. ‘We must be left in no doubt as to where your allegiances lie. Your success is welcome, and applauded. But your unannounced arrival here in such strength has the Senatorum Imperialis in uproar.’

  ‘If the Senatorum had proved a little more effective in governing, and a little less in pursuing the interests of the senators, then we would not need to be here at all, and my brothers might yet live,’ said Koorland quietly.

  Udo pulled a face. ‘You see, it is words of that sort that fan the flames of my fears. Is that a threat, second captain?’

  ‘We have no interest in usurping the Senatorum!’ said Koorland. He rose from his seat. Issachar grabbed his wrist, but Koorland pulled free. He leaned over the table. ‘Is this why we were left alone to die upon Ardamantua, because you are afraid of us? Did you expend the lives of the Imperium’s staunchest defenders in political calculation?’

  ‘I doubt much thought went into it at all, brother,’ said Verpall. ‘That is the root of the problem here.’

  ‘Yours is a simple breed,’ said Udo. ‘Bred for war. You think on nothing but matters of combat and honour. I have seen contempt for the common man too many times in the face of a Space Marine. You think yourselves intelligent, and you are, but you forget too often you are made for conflict, and conflict invariably follows in your wake. Leave the subtleties of government to those better suited, as the Emperor intended.’

  ‘My lord Malfons died to preserve your office,’ said Verpall. ‘Do not insult us again.’

  ‘There, you see. A veiled threat. Another statement that forges my opinion the harder. You must listen to me. Do as I say and we shall have no difficulty between us. Tomorrow, we will proceed to the surface where you will be feted as the saviours that you are. Then, in the Senatorum Imperialis, you will renew your oaths of fealty to the Imperium. Then you shall be acknowledged as the Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, Second Captain Koorland, with the full will of the Senatorum. After which, we shall formulate plans – with the backing of myself, the Lord Commander Militant, Lord High Admiral Lansung and the others – to end this crisis.’