Throneworld

by Guy Haley

‘Then you are treading the same deluded path as Lorgar. How will the other Space Marines look upon this great naiveté? Common humanity already worships the Emperor, and I say again, against His express wishes. All that is, Magneric, is an expression of their weakness and desire to be dominated, and proof of the Emperor’s desire to be worshipped despite His protestations. It appears Lorgar was but a little too early with his devotion. What would your Emperor make of you now? Would He hold out a hand for you to kiss while you grovel upon your knees? Or would He smash your face in with a mailed fist as He did to Lorgar?’

  ‘We would take either gladly,’ said Magneric, ‘if it meant our Lord would walk among men once more.’

  Engine noise rumbled. The extraction craft approached, seven of them, and began to set down one after the other in the wreckage of the field. Kalkator’s Thunderhawks opened their hatches, and his men began to leave the building. The Black Templars made no move to stop them. They remained kneeling, heads bowed in prayer as the Iron Warriors passed between them.

  ‘Such devotion. Perhaps the Emperor is a god, after all, if He can inspire sane men to worship Him so,’ said Kalkator.

  ‘Embrace this truth, and your soul will be saved!’ said Magneric eagerly.

  Kalkator laughed. Before he left the roof to join his warriors aboard their craft, he shouted down to Magneric. ‘I am not going to convert to your pathetic creed, Magneric. For if I cannot trust a man who lies, I trust a god who does so even less.’

  Ralstan came to Magneric’s side, his wargear dripping gore. Kalkator’s gunships were taking off and heading for the sky. The Black Templars were preparing to leave, honouring their dead with silent prayer as they gathered up the wargear of the fallen and extracted gene-seed to safeguard against the future.

  ‘We could order them shot down as soon as they break atmosphere,’ said the castellan.

  Magneric’s torso tilted backwards, watching the Iron Warriors gunships recede, becoming glowing balls of fire rising high into the night.

  ‘No. Let the hunt begin anew. We honour the oaths we make in battle, castellan, or we are no better than they.’

  Twenty-One

  Three partings

  Kubik arrived in the temple of the diagnostic covens as the interrogation was ending. In a chamber deep underground, the dead Assassin was suspended from the ceiling, hands and feet fully enclosed in manacles. Portions of her skin had been removed, exposing bloodless muscles. Spaces in her anatomy hinted at the devices removed from her body. A domed helmet enclosed her head, studded all over with conical spikes from which curled multiple silver wires.

  A lone genetor interogatis worked the machines probing the dead Assassin’s brain, accompanied by coil-handed servitors whose sole purpose was to adjust the magnetism of two tall field modulators.

  ‘Ah, Fabricator General, you arrive in time for the climax of my investigation. Most of the information I have extracted has been through the memorandum parsers. It should be ready soon. Bear with me as I finish this final interrogation.’

  The genetor was a repulsive thing, a skinny flesh torso supported on limbs of slender sliding rods. His voice was papery, eager. He was a man who enjoyed his repellent work. ‘One moment, and I shall have the information you desire.’ He returned to his howling machines.

  Kubik waited behind a buffering screen, lest his own bioelectrical field destroy the data being culled from the woman’s memory. He did not have to remain there for long. The machines cut out. A wet crack preceded the withdrawal of the helmet from the woman’s head. Wormy cyber-tentacles wriggled from her skull, dripping matter. The corpse shuddered.

  ‘I have all the raw data,’ said the genetor interogatis. ‘It will take a little while to transpose the last few fragments into binharic instructions my cogitators might process, and thence to image and sound…’ The genetor trailed off, absorbed in his task. Kubik waited twelve minutes. ‘There, I have it.’

  ‘Show me,’ said Kubik.

  ‘The image quality will be lacking, Fabricator General,’ said the genetor apologetically. ‘The woman was fresh, but drawing information from an unmodified brain is always the hardest. Editicore processors are the best, but even the least intelligence core can offer up a mind’s secrets. Alas, here we must rely on the primitive wiring of the flesh.’

  He threw a lever with one three-fingered metal hand. An elliptical screen flickered on the wall.

  ‘There. The most recent memory I could recover, and I believe the most relevant. To go through her entire life will take time, even those few fragments that survived her death. But I think this will be helpful, great prime.’

  Kubik ignored the prattling of the genetor, and watched the picts run, a jumble of images in no particular order. A lesser mind would have made no sense of them, but Kubik’s augmetics automatically recorded the images, and began to re-edit them into something approaching usability. He watched a scene from a few days ago, the gathering of an Assassin cadre. They stood around the loading ramp of an automated haulage barge in an obscure section of the Olympian landing fields. Where exactly, Kubik could not tell. There were five of them. The dead girl, three more on foot, one in a cryo-containment unit. Kubik seethed to see them meeting in the shadow of his own seat of power. The images jumped, running out of sequence, the scene changing to the vagaries of imperfect human recollection.

  Four Assassins remained at liberty. Five was an unusually high number for one cell. Kubik had sat in the Senatorum for hundreds of years and had been involved in the authorisation votes for several high-level assassinations. One Assassin could topple the government of a world. But five? Deployment of such a number within the Imperium was reserved for the holders of the very highest offices, those who could call upon substantial resources – rogue admirals, corrupt cardinals, the renegade lords of star systems, or perhaps even a High Lord of Terra…

  Kubik appraised the images, using what little he knew of the Officio Assassinorum to fit the operatives with the temples. The metronomic tick of his augmetic regulators stuttered when he identified the Eversor Temple adept within the cryo-containment pod, a creature so violent it had to be kept in suspended animation.

  A further jumble of images showed him Vangorich on the ramp of the ship. Vangorich had been on Mars – he had come to Mars on one of Kubik’s own vessels! Kubik’s anger rose. The cell had been deployed by his direct order. This was no routine mission.

  The images played one last time, and faded out.

  ‘That is the extent of it, my lord. There is no more,’ said the genetor.

  ‘Your efforts are noted,’ said Kubik, and departed the chamber without further word. He had seen enough.

  Five Assassins. There could be only one explanation. One reason to deploy such a powerful cadre on Mars. Was there not only one target of sufficient power and value? Only one so well protected that five of the most deadly killers in the galaxy would be required to ensure certain death?

  Himself.

  Vangorich intended to kill him.

  The auditorium seemed bigger than ever to Mesring. The masses of worshippers within the nave of the vast subterranean cathedral seemed to stretch away into infinity, a sea of hopeless souls beseeching him for salvation. Vat-cherubs and psyber-birds jostled for space with servo-skulls in the incense-choked air. The breathing of the crowd was a soft wind.

  Mesring was sweating long before the sermon was done. The free-floating vox-horns and vox-pieces on ornate stands crowded in on him. He stumbled through his second homily, cutting short the service with a hurried blessing when his tongue thickened and stuck in his mouth halfway through the third.

  The ranks of cardinals at the back of Auditorium Oratio stage stared as he lurched past them.

  ‘Your holiness?’ one asked.

  He ignored her, banging through the doors, his Frateris Templar guard catching him before he ploughed into the corridor wall opposite.
Head spinning, he left the Auditorium Oratio and blundered along thick carpets towards his private exit. By the time he had left the Basilica Vox Imperatorum, he had difficulty walking, staggering past his sedan chair and the waiting servitors. Three lesser priests gently turned him around and put him inside. The box lurched as the servitor bearers engaged their wheels, carrying him swiftly down the five-kilometre corridor to his private apartments. His Frateris Templars fell in beside the chair, running alongside in escort.

  The sedan took him deep into the heartlands of the Ecclesiarchal hive, up long ramps to the side of the mountainous staircases leading to his palace. It drew to a halt outside the main gates in anticipation of his dismounting, but the Frateris Templar runners shouted to the guard, ‘Open the gates! Open the gates! The Ecclesiarch is taken ill!’

  The sedan rolled on, into the entrance hall, lofty as any cardinal world’s cathedral. The crowd of sextons, servants, vergers, ushers and savants parted in confusion as the chair rolled through them, interrupting the nightly ritual of the Ecclesiarch’s retiring. The vestal choirs on the stairs sang on, but their efforts were unappreciated, the sedan whisking past them swiftly.

  ‘The Ecclesiarch is unwell!’ called the Templars going before it. ‘Make way, make way!’ Murmurs of consternation went through the army of holy men and women waiting upon their lord.

  The chair rushed along lengthy galleries to Mesring’s private chambers. Outside doors clad in gold his guards helped him from the chair. He pushed them away, nearly falling inside as the doors were opened for him.

  ‘Call for the medicae!’ shouted the Templar’s prior. ‘We shall have a healer with you soon, my lord. For the Emperor’s sake, get him to his bed.’

  ‘No, no,’ mumbled Mesring. ‘No medicae or hospitaller. It will pass, it will pass.’

  ‘Your holiness–’

  ‘I said no healers!’ he yelled. A stinking belch followed, half retch. ‘It will pass. Rest, rest, I need rest.’ He summoned enough strength to waver inside. ‘Leave me!’ he shouted to the gaggle of savant priests awaiting his return. Mesring tore at his heavy robes, ripping his cloak and mitre off, throwing them on the floor without a care. ‘Hot, hot! Too damn hot!’ he bellowed as he yanked madly at the multiple layers of his liturgical dress. Priests hurried to his side to aid him, and he slapped one down as he reached to undo the laces of his vestment, sending him reeling. ‘Leave me be!’ he spluttered.

  His violent staggering had the acolytes sent to attend on him retreating with fear. With the strength of desperation, he ripped his vestments, scattering a planetary lord’s ransom in jewels across the floor. His priests scurried to retrieve them.

  ‘Out, out! Get out!’ he shouted. His throat was thick with phlegm, voice clotted. He could not think, he could not stand. He staggered on through his fleeing servants, wrenching his surplice over his head, throttling himself with its laces. Nearly naked, still he was too hot!

  He came to his bedchamber, and shouldered the doors open. Food had been left out for him, a tall ewer of wine, all the plate of gold and platinum. He crashed into the table, sending delicacies over the carpet. ‘Where is it?’ he said. ‘Where is it?’ He trailed off into tears, and sank to his knees into the wet mess of his dinner, weeping freely.

  He stopped. An awful voice whispered to him from the covered gallery running around the walls where, for a hefty sum, the most pious lords and ladies might watch Mesring’s ceremonial rising in the morning. When he peeked over the tips of his fingers, seeking it out, the statues of the stonework shifted and leered at him, shaking their heads in disapproval.

  ‘I’m not drunk, I’m not drunk, damn you! How dare you judge me, so-called saints! No man is perfect. Am I not but a man? You sit there on your lofty walls, dead and gone, safe in the Emperor’s light. It is I who must endure this world of pain and perfidy, where every smile hides a sharp tooth eager for blood, every promise is a lie. I am poisoned by Vangorich! Manipulated by Wienand. Emperor save me. Damn you, Vangorich! Emperor cast you into the warp! I… I…’ He shook his head in confusion, got to his feet where he stood swaying, peering at the mess he had made.

  ‘Why, what happened, what happened? The antidote, the antidote. I must have it. Yes, that is why I am here.’ He swung around, his arms flying out from his sides, lumbering to a richly carved Lectitio Divinatus box on an ancient dresser. His extremities tingled painfully, and an awful burning had set up in his stomach. With numb fingers he pawed at the box catch, opening it on the fourth try. He began to cry again as he fished out a smaller box hidden inside – the jewelled skull of a holy innocent.

  At the bottom of the skull box were a half-dozen tiny crystals. He tipped the box up, spilled half. Wailing loudly, he dabbed at the carpet with a wet finger, desperate to recover his treasure. He sucked his finger. The crystal dissolved, flooding his mouth with a vile acid taste that made his stomach roil, but the unpleasantness was passing, and was followed by blessed relief. He leaned against the dark wood of the dresser as first his queasiness subsided, then the spinning in his head. Relief spread out to his fingers, the numbness and pain seeping from him.

  He sat slumped for some time, before recovering himself. Groaning, he got up. His room was a catastrophe. In his hand rested the small box. With woozy eyes he focused on it. There were five crystals left inside. Each dose was good for five days, five times five was twenty-five. Such a simple calculation to count out a man’s life! Wienand was dead. His chances of getting more antidote were remote. He could tell no one, not without seriously compromising his position. Who would have faith in him if he were revealed to be so fallible?

  Lucidity was fleeting. The poison would start its work again soon enough, and he was gripped by anxiety. He looked up to the many faces of the Emperor carved into rare woods in the friezes of his room.

  ‘Where are You? Why don’t You help me?’ he whispered. ‘Have I not served You faithfully? Put forward the interests of Your church where I could? So if I took a little pleasure for myself, it is nothing to the work I have done for You!’ He got onto his knees and lifted a hand, clawed as if it gripped his heart and he would offer it to his god. ‘Help me!’

  The Emperor, His face so placid and commanding, looked everywhere but at Mesring. He gazed upon scenes from the past so distant no one could name them any more, a dead god unaware of His own irrelevance, dwelling on glories that would never be seen again.

  A sharp pain stabbed through Mesring’s head. ‘You are weak! Self-absorbed! You denied Your godhood to the people who loved You, You used us, You use us still!’ His eyes strayed eastward, and he cringed in the direction of the great dome of the Throne Room. When no reprisal came he huffed in contempt. ‘But the orks, the orks!’ He lifted a finger skyward. ‘They are above Your Palace, and You do nothing! Why do You not smite them from the sky?’

  A jangle of phantom noise shattered his thoughts. He blinked at the swaying images crowding his thoughts, his fellows gathered around his bed, jeering at him. The antidote had yet to complete its work.

  ‘It is because the Beast is stronger than You!’ he shouted.

  Mesring got to his feet, and casting accusing looks over his shoulder, he went to the window of his chamber, flinging shutters wide that had remained closed for years. Acrid air flooded in. The Imperial Palace was a sea of lights shoaled by spires of metal and stone. Two moons shone down on it. Full of fear, he lifted his eyes heavenward. The ork moon’s brutal face stared down at him. Mesring met its gaze. The attack moon was surrounded by the pinprick lights of the Space Marine fleet. Surrounded by the mightiest warriors in the Imperium, and still it shone! He feared its great strength.

  Strength. Undeniable, present, immanent, so unlike his deaf god.

  There was something worthy of his respect.

  Koorland waited to meet Thane alone in a minor shuttle bay of the Abhorrence. He stayed out of sight, watching Thane’s bondsmen go over their smal
l craft. Vapour curled from its engines as the pilot put them through their pre-flight warm-up, while two others went over it carefully, checking its surface and various devices inside and out. There were so many tasks the servants of a Chapter performed. They were invisible most of the time, but without them the Space Marines would not be able to function. If he were truly the Master of a Chapter, he would have to acquaint himself with their activities to a level he had never considered before.

  The lord of the Fists Exemplar entered the hangar flanked by two of his honour guard. They reacted quickly when Koorland stepped out of the shadows, training their boltguns upon him.

  ‘Koorland?’ said Thane. ‘What are you doing skulking about down here?’

  ‘I wished to speak with you before you departed. Privately.’

  Thane looked over his shoulder at his men and nodded to them. They lowered their weapons and went into the waiting vessel.

  ‘What do you need to say to me that could not be said in front of the others?’ said Thane.

  ‘Nothing of great import,’ said Koorland. ‘I wanted to wish you well. You and I are in a similar position, both of us elevated to Chapter Mastery by the deaths of others.’

  ‘Your tragedy is greater than mine, brother,’ said Thane. ‘My Chapter survives.’

  ‘As does mine, so long as I live. I must use however much time is left to me well.’

  ‘A noble aim, brother,’ said Thane.

  ‘I wanted to impress upon you a need for great care. Not against the orks, but against hubris. Issachar is agitating that we should go further. The Last Wall has shown the efficacy of a large force of Space Marines gathered together. He has not done so yet, but it will not be long before he openly advocates the reformation of the Legion. I know you are sympathetic to his opinion. You must reconsider.’

  ‘I see it coming,’ Thane agreed. ‘Our own gene-father was against the division originally. He relented only to prevent further civil strife in the Imperium.’ He paused. ‘What if Lord Dorn were right all along? Perhaps Lord Guilliman was the one who was wrong. What if he divided the Legions in a panic, and it has been to the detriment of the Imperium ever since?’