The Damnation of Pythos

by David Annandale

  Bit by bit, she acquired the knowledge of her location and condition. Her senses awoke from their paralysis. She gathered her identity and hugged it close. A terrible shame enveloped her. She had been weak. She had no idea how long she had lain unconscious, derelict in her duties.

  Worse was her knowledge of what had happened. She had been attacked. There had been an attacker.

  She pushed herself up off the floor. Her awareness of her surroundings returned to her, but imperfectly, as if they were a degraded hololith transmission. She reached for her staff. It was where it should be, resting against the throne. She clutched it, steadied her stance, then braced her mind. Cautiously, she reached out to the warp.

  She grunted in pain. Warm tears of blood trickled from the corners of her eyes. Harsh, jagged, silver static disrupted her perception of the empyrean. It stabbed at her mind. It was claws and broken glass, absences in the shape of pain, distortions that were madness layered on madness. She withdrew before she collapsed again.

  She wiped the blood from her cheeks. She steadied herself, found her core of strength and left her dark chamber. She had to speak to Atticus. Yesterday, she had assumed the warp storms were the inevitable result of random processes in that realm. The attack changed that. The implications were too immense for her to accept. The direction down which her thoughts were flowing had to be mistaken. But something had attacked her, and that must be reported.

  There was very little sound in the command block. Erephren passed a few serfs, but she encountered no presence of the Iron Hands. As she approached the door to Atticus’s quarters, a woman emerged from them. ‘Mistress Erephren,’ the serf said. ‘I’m sorry, but Lord Atticus is not here.’

  Erephren sensed the other woman’s deep bow. ‘Where is he?’ she asked.

  ‘He and a great many of the legionaries have gone to the settlement.’

  ‘Why?’

  There was a hesitation. ‘I do not have the honour of the confidence–’ the woman began.

  ‘You have enough of the captain’s confidence to be given the duty of caring for his chamber,’ the astropath interrupted. ‘Serfs listen, observe and talk among themselves. Now you will enlighten me. What are the rumours?’

  ‘They say that something has been found there.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘I do not know, mistress.’

  Erephren thought for a moment. The attack; the interference with her connection to the warp; this discovery, whatever it was, that had summoned away the leadership of the company: these things were linked. She had to inform Atticus about what had happened to her. ‘I need a vox operator,’ she told the woman.

  ‘I will summon one,’ the serf answered. But she did not leave immediately. Erephren heard an intake of breath, the sound of someone gathering courage to speak again.

  ‘What is your name?’ Erephren asked.

  ‘Agnes Tanaura, mistress.’

  ‘You wish to ask me something, Agnes?’

  ‘You do not believe that what happened last night was a simple warp effect, do you?’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Do you know what it was?’

  ‘No,’ she said. She was about to add that she would not engage in speculation, but then realised that Tanaura did not expect her to have an answer. The serf had one of her own. Whether presumption or courage was pushing the woman to talk, either was impressive enough to make Erephren listen. ‘Do you?’ she asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Tanaura said. ‘What I know is that it was something unholy.’

  ‘Unholy,’ Erephren repeated, bitterly disappointed. ‘You are risking severe sanction, using such a benighted term.’

  ‘Forgive me, mistress, but I must speak the truth, and it is the truth. You were touched by this evil in the night. I can see it.’ There was a rustle as Tanaura took a step forwards. ‘We are not alone in our fight, though,’ she said. ‘There is comfort. There is hope. There is a sacred–’

  Erephren held up a hand. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘You are blithering, and I do not have time for nonsense.’

  ‘The Emperor,’ Tanaura hurried on. ‘In His divinity, He will save us, but we must accept Him before it is too late.’ Erephren felt a tug on her robe. The serf was daring to clutch at her. ‘Please listen to me,’ Tanaura begged. ‘Please listen to what you must know, in your heart, to be true. The legionaries will listen to you. They must. Oh, they must.’ She was on the verge of weeping.

  Erephren pulled her robe from Tanaura’s grasp. ‘Must they?’ The flush of contempt she felt was a relief. She was almost grateful to this woman and her forbidden superstition. She was being reminded of her true responsibilities, and jolted away from the temptations of irrationality that had loomed large since the attack. ‘Why is it so important that they listen?’

  ‘Because we must leave this place,’ Tanaura said, her voice very small.

  Erephren snorted. ‘That is the extent of your faith? You believe, against His explicit teachings, that the Emperor is a god, but that He is too weak to be of aid to us?’

  ‘That… That isn’t what I mean…’

  ‘Then make yourself clear, and do so quickly.’

  ‘We may not have chosen the battleground wisely–’

  ‘We?’ Erephren demanded, enraged by the woman’s arrogance.

  Tanaura stumbled backwards. ‘I did not intend to suggest–’

  ‘As you value your life, I hope you did not!’ Erephren tightened her grip on her staff. She was not cruel. But there were limits before effrontery must be punished.

  ‘Please understand,’ Tanaura begged. ‘Not all battles can be won. We already know this. Perhaps we face another Isstvan here. Perhaps the true struggle is elsewhere.’

  Erephren’s rage subsided as she heard the agonised hope in the serf’s voice. The woman was no coward. She was acting as her conception of her duty dictated. When the astropath spoke again, she kept the threat from her tone. But she remained firm.

  ‘You may think so. But your worship is a delusion, and it is only by an act of mercy that I do not have you silenced.’ She paused for a moment, letting Tanaura realise her near escape. She went on, ‘And a delusion is not a weapon. It is a weakness. I follow the Emperor’s teachings, and I use the force of reason against our foe. Until such time as Captain Atticus declares otherwise, Pythos is ours. It is the key to the Tenth Legion’s ability to strike back at the traitors, and I will not turn from it, unless our commanding officer so orders.’ She leaned towards Tanaura, and the presence of the serf shrank before her. ‘This is my battle. Here. I will not retreat. I have been attacked, and I will make the enemy, whatever it is, rue the day it crossed my path.’

  As she spoke, she felt the truth of her words gather iron. The terror of the night had evaporated, leaving a precipitate of cold rage.

  ‘Do you understand me?’ she demanded of the serf.

  ‘I do, mistress.’

  ‘Now summon the vox operator. There is work to be done.’

  Atticus walked the edge of the pit. Galba and Darras followed. A few hundred metres away, Lacertus and his squad mounted guard over a second subsidence. ‘And the colonists have done no work on this?’ the captain asked.

  ‘They say they have not,’ Galba confirmed. He looked down into the deep chasm. ‘I do not see how they could have.’ The pit had opened up in front of the mound on which the lodge was built. It was forty metres wide and ten across. Its depth was hard to guess. It fell into darkness after about a hundred metres.

  ‘Though they have been industrious,’ said Darras.

  It was true. During the night, the wall had been extended along half the perimeter of the plateau. The secure zone was twice what it had been when Galba and Darras had left the evening before.

  ‘Hundreds of people working without cease,’ Galba answered. ‘What they accomplished with the wall is well
within the possible. This pit is not. And Lacertus saw no sign of explosives being used. The ground collapsed. That is all.’

  ‘Could the construction of their meeting places have been a factor?’ Darras wondered. A second lodge was nearing completion on the mound before the second pit.

  ‘No,’ said Atticus. ‘If the ground were that unstable, we would have known. I believe what caused the subsidence is a symptom of our problem, and not the cause.’ He paused, cocking his head to one side as he listened to his ear bead. Then he turned to the sergeants. ‘News from Mistress Erephren,’ he told them. ‘She had her own battle last night, and the attack continues. Her ability to read the warp is being sabotaged.’ He looked into the pit. ‘The subsidence is not our concern,’ he emphasised. ‘That is.’ He pointed at what was revealed in the pit.

  Beneath the colonists’ lodge was a massive stone structure. The mound was nothing more than the peak of the squat dome of the building. It appeared to be made of the same sort of stone as the structure at the epicentre of the anomaly. But that column remained an ambiguity, neither clearly natural nor artificial. There was no such ambivalence before them now. Even so, what was visible of the cyclopean structure had a disturbingly seamless quality. Galba could see no joins, no mortar, no hint that the edifice had not been carved from a single mass of black rock. It was as if an entire cliff face had flowed into this shape, and then been buried by the passage of thousands of millennia. A similar structure was visible at the site of the second subsidence.

  Galba said, ‘If this is what lies beneath two of the mounds…’

  ‘Yes,’ Atticus replied, turning around in a slow circle. ‘Is it also true of the other mounds?’

  Galba followed Atticus’s example. He realised now how evenly spaced the four mounds were. Diagonal lines connecting them would meet in the centre of the plateau. ‘Why,’ he wondered, ‘has there been no subsidence at the other two locations? It has only happened where the colonists have been building.’

  ‘There must be a connection,’ said Darras. ‘We just can’t see it yet.’

  ‘If there is, we shall find it,’ Atticus declared. ‘What is important is that our enemy begins to show his hand, and so becomes vulnerable to counter-attack.’

  Galba frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

  Atticus pointed to the xenos structure. ‘No saurian built that. It is direct evidence of intelligent life on Pythos.’ He turned his gaze on Galba. ‘No ghost built this, either.’

  Galba refused to be cowed. ‘How long would it take for natural processes to bury something like this? What evidence do we have that the race that constructed it is still with us?’

  ‘The fact of its return is evidence. Who else would have an interest in it? Beyond that, I care little for the nature of our enemy besides the best way to destroy it. The interference Mistress Erephren is experiencing will stymie our war effort. Our foe’s psychological attacks are also proving costly.’

  ‘What are your orders?’ Darras asked.

  Atticus walked to the edge of the chasm. ‘We expose the truth,’ he said. ‘And we descend into the heart of the lie.’

  There was more work than ever. There was urgency to it, too. Atticus had commanded that the full extent of the underground structure be revealed. All of the colonists had now been shipped to the plateau. Every serf not essential to the running of the base had been brought here, too. The command was a simple one: dig.

  Kanshell did as was commanded. The equipment was limited. The Veritas Ferrum was equipped for destruction, not colonisation. Most of what was available had come with the refugee fleet, and what had been salvaged from the landings before the saurian onslaught was as worn and patchwork as the ships themselves. There were no earthmovers. There were shovels and picks, and many of those had been assembled from bits of wreckage. The task was immense. The means should have made it almost impossible. But the will and the hands were there. The colonists were eager to help. Half their number worked on the wall and held off marauding predators. For the moment, the saurian incursions were an occasional event, easily repulsed. The other half joined the serfs in attacking the ground at the base of the mounds.

  Kanshell no longer held the hope of sleep induced by exhaustion. He knew that the night would bring screams, and there was nothing he could do except hope the screams were not his own. He still welcomed the work. It gave him focus during the day. It was something he could pretend was useful. Over vox-horns broadcasting the entire width and breadth of the plateau, Atticus promised that war was about to be brought to the enemy’s home. Kanshell wanted to believe him. But the more he dug, the more that was uncovered, the shakier his faith became.

  His faith was shaken because of how quickly the work progressed. The earth seemed eager to give up its secrets. Kanshell, along with dozens of other workers, attacked the edges of the second pit. The ground fell away with every blow, tumbling down into the dark, pebbles and clods striking the face of the black structure. More of it was visible all the time, though its mystery deepened also. The scale of the building became more apparent. Kanshell wondered if it might not encircle the plateau. Atticus had directed other teams to start excavations at a point equidistant between the four mounds. So far, they had nothing but a deep hole to show for their efforts.

  His faith was shaken because of the structure’s mystery. As it became exposed to light, it mocked rationality. The façade was a riot of ornate sculpture. There was nothing representational about the artwork. The twisting lines and bulges of the stonework were an abstract language of ghastly majesty. When Kanshell looked at the carvings directly, he saw power frozen into stone, and stone about to explode as power. He could not stare long. The designs hurt his head. They tried to strangle his eyes. His skin crawled so much, it felt like it was sloughing off his bones. When he averted his gaze, the torment changed its nature. His peripheral vision kept picking up movement. Serpentine beckoning called to him. When he looked, of course there was no movement. But the immobility was a mockery, a lie. The terror grew that the next time he looked, the stone would squirm, and that would be the moment of his end.

  The colonists sang as they worked. They were as committed to the dig as they were to the wall. They transformed their labour into an act of worship. They showed no fear. Kanshell was sick with envy. On the faces of the other serfs, he saw the reflection of his own terrors. Their eyes jumped and skittered as his did. They were pale, taut from lack of sleep. The energy of their actions was fuelled by desperation. But there were some, frightened though they were, who seemed more composed. They were drawing on a deep reserve of inner strength. Kanshell saw something different in them. They had something in common with the colonists.

  They had belief.

  Atticus held off the descent until the excavations were well under way. Kanshell watched him march from one work site to another, evaluating. The captain observed with the dispassion of a cogitator. He did not rush his legionaries into the gulfs. He was gathering what intelligence could be gleaned, though Kanshell could not guess what the colossus learned from the gradual exposure. After three hours, though, he prepared to lead a mission into the largest chasm, before the first of the lodges that had been built.

  Kanshell paused in his digging to watch the two squads gather at the lip of the drop. They anchored rappelling cables strong enough to support the weight of a Space Marine clad in power armour. A group of the Raven Guard joined them. They were wearing jump packs.

  ‘You are frightened,’ said a voice. It was deep as a mountain chain. Kanshell turned and looked up. Khi’dem of the Salamanders stood before him. Though the legionary wore his helmet, Kanshell sensed a stern kindness in his eyes. It was something he had never found in any of the Iron Hands, except Galba.

  ‘I am, lord,’ Kanshell said.

  ‘You should not be. You should have confidence in the Legiones Astartes. There is no xenos force that can stand before us.’


  ‘I know.’

  Khi’dem cocked his head. ‘My words give you no comfort, do they?’

  If any member of the Iron Tenth, even Galba, had asked that question, Kanshell would have answered honestly because, however much he might be reluctant to admit the truth of his weakness, he was more terrified of lying to his machine-like masters. Now, Kanshell felt the truth invited, rather than extracted, from him. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I’m sorry, lord, but they do not.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I…’

  Had it been night, had he been ringed by the terrors that came with the dark, he would not have hesitated. Though the respite of the day was a weak one, it was enough to hold him back from a criminal admission.

  Khi’dem took pity on him, and provided the answer himself. ‘It is because you think this is an enemy of a very different order.’

  Kanshell gave the tiniest nod.

  ‘This belief is becoming commonplace in the ranks of the serfs. It is a mistaken one. Place your belief in your captain. I’m sure what you have experienced is terrifying, but these are attacks. If this were all a manifestation of how thin the barrier to the immaterium is on this planet, there would be little we could do. But an enemy can be fought. It is that simple.’

  ‘Yes, lord,’ Kanshell answered. No, he thought. It is not that simple.

  The son of Vulkan watched him a moment longer, then walked away.

  He knows I don’t believe him, Kanshell thought, his face flushing with shame.

  He threw himself back into his work. He dislodged more clumps of earth that fell into the dark. The strip of ground on which he stood, between the chasm and the plateau’s slope, felt like thin ice. It was distressing to realise how much beneath his feet was hollow. The dark below was a maw that waited for him.