by Guy Haley
Angron threw over another stack. Khârn used the cover of the noise to run out unnoticed behind his father. Angron’s whole upper body heaved with each breath. Leathery wings flexed. Every movement he made revealed a towering anger barely contained. Khârn recognised the condition in himself.
Khârn ran, Gorechild in one hand, the unwieldy spear of the teleport homer in the other. Gathering all his strength, he leapt, the fibre muscles in his battleplate sending him high. He crashed into Angron’s back, and buried the teleport homer deep in his father’s searing red skin between the shoulders where, even with great determination, the primarch would struggle to knock it loose.
Angron’s reaction was immediate and furious. He roared loudly, spinning around, knocking Khârn back. Khârn landed heavily, and scrambled up, while Angron’s hand came up, scratching at his back, but though his black nails brushed the teleport homer, it refused to be dislodged.
‘You have no honour! Attacking from behind.’ Yellow eyes blazed. ‘No true son of mine would stoop so low. We are warriors! We face our enemies. We look them in the eye before we take their heads for the skull throne! You are weak, all of you, slaves to my father then slaves to me. I should have killed you that day you first came to me. You are weak!’
Khârn backed away. The urge to throw himself into battle with his father was crippling his mind. ‘Lotara, now!’ He spoke through a mouthful of blood. Fluid ran down his nasal passages from his bleeding brain and drooled from his lips and out of the open vent of his breathing grille. ‘Lotara! Lotara!’ he snarled. ‘Now!’
Static replied. Angron was on him. He jumped, wings spread, half gliding, half falling towards his equerry. All sign of recognition, of humanity, was absent from the primarch’s face, subsumed by the need to kill. His black sword hissed through the air, bringing a thin scream from reality as it too was wounded.
The Butcher’s Nails pounded in time with the thumping of Khârn’s hearts. ‘Lotara…’ he managed, but the nails sang louder, and his words snagged in his throat. Roaring, he dodged Angron’s swing, and surged forwards, gunning Gorechild’s motor as he cut down towards his father’s knee. The primarch kicked, sending Khârn hurtling sideways and cracking his breast-plate. He drew his plasma pistol as he rolled out of the way of Angron’s stamping foot. A return swing of the sword took off part of Khârn’s pauldron. Sickly sweet smoke boiled off the damaged ceramite. He rolled again, too far gone into anger to feel the stab of his broken ribs. The plasma pistol whined as it charged. Gorechild blocked another punishing blow. Black sword locked with dragon’s teeth. Ligaments tore in Khârn’s arm as his father forced his weapon down towards his face. Gorechild’s engine screamed, the tooth track locked on to the edge of the daemon primarch’s blade. Priceless mica dragon teeth smoked as daemonic fires ate into them.
‘You are disappointing, Khârn,’ said Angron. The sword was closing on Khârn’s face. Angron grunted with the effort of forcing down the blade. ‘I thought if any of my sons could test me, it would be you. I was wrong. You are weak.’
‘And you… Hnnh,’ Khârn fought to speak. ‘You have lost your mind, my lord.’ The plasma pistol let out a ready note. Khârn brought it up and fired it point-black into Angron’s face.
The heat from the plasma stream seared Khârn’s face within his helmet. Angron roared and reeled back; his eyes cooked to steam and his cheeks stripped back to smoking bone. Khârn pushed himself up, playing the pistol across his father’s chest. The gun let out a warning, but Khârn fired until it overheated and vented superheated coolant all down his arm. Red lights flashed by its charging coils; the gun was useless. He disengaged the power feed and threw it aside. Angron staggered back, crashing into a pile of containers that crumpled like paper under his weight.
Angron roared and thrashed in agony, but already the damage was being made good. Eyes swelled like moist fungal fruits in empty sockets. Charred flesh swelled with rehydration, skin closed over deep burns. Veins and nerves spread across exposed bone, followed by muscle and fat.
‘You cannot beat me! You are as unworthy as these pathetic slaves!’
Khârn readied himself. His muscles burned. Gorechild shook in his weakened grip.
‘Father,’ he said in a drool-soaked growl. ‘I do not wish to fight you.’
‘You have no choice,’ Angron bellowed. ‘There is only war.’
The black sword hurtled down again. Khârn could not block it, he knew, but held Gorechild ready to deflect the blade, and prepared the blow he would land before he died.
Angron’s roar battered at Khârn.
Lightning skittered all over the daemon primarch. Wisps of corposant streamed off his body in a white fog. Then, with a clap of air rushing suddenly into a vacuum, he was gone.
Khârn fell down. His right hand refused to work, and he wrestled his helm off with his left, vomiting blood copiously onto the floor. The Nails hammered at him relentlessly.
‘Kh…?’ The vox-beads in his ears rattled with the reactor’s angry beat. ‘Khârn? Khârn? Can you hear me? Are you still alive? Khârn? The Night Lords have the primarch. Khârn?’
Khârn coughed. His enhancements and armour were working in tandem to repair the damage to his body, and where they could not, to numb the pain. He sat down, legs out in front of him.
‘Khârn?’
‘Hnnnh,’ he said. ‘You took… you took your damn time.’
The Nightfall, Terran near orbit, 7th of Quartus
Angron appeared in a blaze of teleport light. His sword was still chopping down and it smashed into the deck of an unfamiliar room. He wrenched the weapon from the metal, ready to slay his son for the greater glory of the Blood God.
Khârn was not there.
Angron growled. His rage was checked for a moment. The ship smelled strange, its sounds were different.
He sniffed the air. He was alone.
A single portal led out of a featureless heptagonal space. Through this he ventured into a cylindrical corridor. A gate slammed down behind him as soon as he was through. Small laser emitters rolled from apertures in the wall and onto tracks cut helically into the tube. The emitters snapped on, their beams constant and razor-thin, and spun themselves into a whirling vortex.
The door behind Angron squealed forwards, pushing the primarch towards the lasers. One stung his skin, then a second, until he was forced into them and they scored his flesh with a netted pattern that would have cut his original body into chunks. They merely pricked his warp-formed flesh.
Angron snarled, brought up the black sword and smashed them all into oblivion. He strode forwards through the smoke of destruction and into the next chamber, where another trial awaited him.
That too he overcame with the sharp edge of his sword.
Senatorum
Infernal allies
Kinder powers
Senatorum Imperialis, 9th of Quartus
The Senatorum Imperialis had the capacity to accommodate thousands, having been constructed for a vision of civilian rule that would allow voices from all parts of society to be heard. It would never come to pass. Rows and rows of empty seats stared down as blind witnesses to the small gathering on the dais at the very heart of the chamber. No meeting had taken place within for months, and the space had been given over to refugees. They had been removed for a while, and now waited patiently outside in the cold under legionary guard, but their possessions remained behind, heaped on benches made into beds where lords were meant to sit. The smell of cooking and chamber pots lingered.
The last council of the Senatorum Imperialis was done before the invasion fleets arrived. Voluntarily it had ceded control to the three primarchs, yet the High Twelve in particular still had great influence, and many responsibilities.
It had been the Khan’s idea to call them back together, just this once, a show of unity between men and demigods.
Upon the dais of the High Twelve, the Ruling Council of the Hegemony of Terra were gathered around their table of fossilised redwo
od. Twelve men and women, Malcador as their chairman – the once-rulers of an empire under siege. Dorn, the Khan, Sanguinius and Constantin Valdor stood at the edge of the dais, slightly out of the light, allowing the Council their moment of remembered authority.
‘Thanks to the actions of Jaghatai Khan, we have a better understanding of what the enemy intends,’ said Malcador. He pointed to the holo-captures the Khan had made, which floated before the gathering over the table. ‘Lord Dorn and the others thought it best we were informed, and for that we are thankful.’
‘What are the enemy’s intentions? What is that?’ Jemm Marison, High Lady of the Imperial Chancellory, asked.
‘That is clearly a siege cannon,’ Zagreus Kane said irritably. He was still new to his role as Terran potentate and had yet to master some of the gentler arts of diplomacy. The others found him abrupt, though preferable to Ambassador Vethorel, whose brash tactics in creating the new Adeptus Mechanicus had left her disliked. ‘The type is quite distinctive. It is shield-bane technology of the Ordo Reductor, a most holy and terrible knowledge. Kelbor-Hal’s traitors are working against the Palace.’
‘It will penetrate the aegis?’ asked Simeon Pentasian, the dour Master of the Administratum. Though all on the Council had renounced governance of the Imperium while the crisis lasted, he worked as they all did in his own sphere of influence, attempting to keep the failing city running while the enemy gathered outside.
‘It has a better chance than a less specialised weapon,’ said Kane. ‘It is far from certain to do so. The aegis is strong.’
‘There are eight siege camps around the Palace. I assume all of them contain similar weaponry,’ said Chancellor Ossian, of the Imperial Estates.
Malcador glanced at Dorn.
‘That is the case,’ said Dorn quietly.
‘I had my Legion survey five of the sites,’ said the Khan. His armour appeared grey outside the area of bright light shining on the table. He moved fluidly, worryingly reminiscent of a predator outside a campfire’s glow. The members of the High Twelve present peered nervously at him. ‘All of them have similar machinery under construction. I chose to overfly the camp facing the Helios Gate myself, because of the tower collapse on that section early in the bombardment.’
‘It is reasonable to assume they will make a determined attempt to break the wall there,’ added Sanguinius. He appeared distant to the Council, as if his mind strayed beyond mortal affairs. ‘They have concentrated their efforts on the Helios section of Daylight, and to the north, at the Potens section of the Dusk Wall.’ His wings shifted, wafting air over the Council that carried sweet scents from a better place. Again they moved in their seats uncomfortably.
‘Then why have they not fired their guns?’ asked Marison.
‘The cannon must be assembled, my lady,’ said Kelsi Demidov, Speaker for the Chartist Captains. She was gentle with Marison, who though expert in her own field lacked breadth of knowledge.
‘The weaponry of the Ordo Reductor is generally apocalyptic in scale,’ said Kane. He chose a deliberately mechanical voice for the meeting, but could not hide his irritation at explaining the obvious to Marison. ‘It takes time to prepare.’
‘I am aware,’ said Marison huffily. ‘We’re all aware of that.’
‘Well,’ said Kane. ‘There are other strategic considerations, of course.’
‘We have nowhere to go,’ said Bolam Haardiker, Paternoval Envoy. ‘They do not need to rush.’ That day he carried his own nuncio system. None of them had their usual servants in attendance.
‘Let them dither!’ said Pentasian. ‘Every moment they waste building their weapons is more time for Lord Guilliman to make his way to Terra and to our rescue. Is that not the case, Lord Dorn?’
‘There is another reason why they are taking their time,’ said Malcador, before Dorn could answer. As Imperial Regent, Malcador was leader of the group. Though his title was more one of ceremony while martial law was in place, he was the only man the primarchs would still defer to. ‘These bombardments, this wasting of life has to have a purpose. Do you think Horus Lupercal, conqueror of half the known galaxy, once most favoured of the Emperor’s sons and appointed Warmaster by Him, has lost his mind?’
‘I had hoped so,’ said General Adreen, the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Armies. ‘It would make him easier to beat.’ His comment drew a ripple of gallows laughter from his fellows.
Malcador didn’t laugh. ‘Thus far we have not seen Horus’ infernal allies upon the field. We are fortunate, the Emperor is powerful, and holds back the wickedness of the warp. But every drop of blood spilled on Terra’s soil weakens His grip on the energies of the empyrean.’
‘Daemons,’ said Nemo Zhi-Meng, Choirmaster of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. ‘He speaks of daemons.’
The lords and ladies looked at one another uneasily at his use of the word.
‘These beings exist,’ Haardiker said, his nuncio set smoothly translating the clicks and whispers emanating from his mutant throat into Gothic. ‘We Navigators know them of old. They serve the entities that name themselves as gods.’
‘Well don’t look so surprised,’ said Pentasian sharply to the others. ‘We’ve all heard the reports. We’ve spoken to eye-witnesses. Do not let the name frighten you – they are extra-dimensional xenos, nothing more.’
The primarchs did not correct him. Better that the High Lords thought that way.
‘They could come in… here?’ said Marison, glancing around the vast building.
‘Maybe. Eventually,’ said Malcador gravely. ‘The Emperor’s power is not infinite, and certainly long before the enemy is able to manifest his wicked allies within these walls, His protection will be weakened sufficiently that the barriers between the materium and immaterium will be broken through elsewhere on Terra. Then we will have to face daemonic creatures fighting alongside Traitor legionaries, besides all the misguided masses who follow the Warmaster.’
‘I can’t quite believe it. In all this, you know,’ Sidat Yaseen Tharcher, Chirurgeon General said. ‘Magic. Sorcery.’ It was hard for him. He was a scientist to the core.
‘The dark side of the warp,’ said Malcador. ‘You all understand, I am sure, that the full extent of the truth is still not to be shared beyond the higher echelons of government. We discuss these matters here among ourselves. They are not to be disseminated further.’
They agreed, some more than others.
‘Why did He lie about this?’ said Ossian abruptly.
‘A lie of omission is not the same as outright untruth,’ argued General Adreen.
‘The Emperor’s omissions are not as awful as some say. The warp has changed,’ said Nemo Zhi-Meng. Few shared the reach of his vision, and he was apt at seeing past the surface of things to grasp truths others did not. ‘Powers move in the deeps of the empyrean that were quiet before. Awareness of them gives them strength. His instinct to shield the human race was the correct one – for the same reason we should not spread this news. Knowledge of the false gods gives them strength. It makes them real. In a certain way of looking at it, until recently they did not exist except as whispers, nightmares and half-myths.’
‘We are not here to discuss the motivations of the Emperor,’ said Malcador firmly.
‘True, true,’ said Pentasian. ‘But still.’ He gave a weak smile, wholly out of place on his miserable face. ‘Nightmares, witches, warp entities. All the old legends coming true.’
‘Please, Lord Dorn, present your strategic analysis,’ said Malcador.
Dorn stepped forwards fully into the light. His golden battleplate flashed resplendently, dazzling the High Lords. Although the dais raised the table well above the debating floor, Dorn was of sufficient height that he could meet their eyes when standing on the ground, and when stood next to the table as he was then, he dwarfed them. The brief illusion of the Council’s authority was shattered. Any who witnessed the scene could not doubt who was the true power on Terra; this son of the Emperor,
with his brilliant white hair and his golden panoply, was the embodiment of the Imperium.
Dorn cast his eye over the High Lords. Most looked down, afraid. A couple met his gaze with difficulty. ‘There are further problems the Khan’s reconnaissance has brought to light,’ Dorn said. ‘You see these structures here?’
‘Buildings?’ said Demidov. ‘Fortresses?’
‘Siege towers,’ said the Khan.
Murmurs of disbelief went around the twelve.
‘They are immense,’ said Adreen. ‘Is it possible? Will they even function?’ He addressed this last question to Kane.
Kane fell into a contemplative silence. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Nullification of mass by contra-gravity devices and structural binding with integrity fields would enable such large objects to be motivated without becoming unstable. They are tactically impractical, and of limited use, but they could be built.’
‘We have indications of other, similar siege engines under construction in the other camps, but none so far advanced as these. It is clear to us that soon the enemy will make an attempt on the walls by the Helios Gate,’ said Dorn.
‘You are bombarding them, of course?’ said Zhi-Meng.
‘I will come to that. First, enemy landing zones,’ Dorn said, pausing after announcing the subject. A projection of Terra came into being, huge and grey, over the table. ‘The enemy has made planetfall at over three hundred separate locations around the globe.’ The hololith displayed enemy concentrations as blotchy purple. ‘Most of this is speculation. There are no precise figures for enemy numbers. Terra’s orbital network is either destroyed or in enemy hands. These figures are collated from information gathered from other hives where possible. In most cases, it is impossible. Supposition is our only tool.