The Damnation of Pythos

by David Annandale

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘I see. You did not come to the conclusion that the ruins were the source of the interference before Mistress Erephren did?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘What might be the source of your inspiration?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Oh?’

  There was little inflection in Atticus’s bionic voice. There were levels of volume, and there was the length that he chose to give his syllables. Those variations were enough to convey a wealth of expression. Galba had no difficulty reading his scepticism in that single word. Even so, the sergeant stood his ground.

  ‘I do not know what the source is. I do know what it is not. I am not a psyker. How would I have concealed that from you, and from all of our brothers, for so long? Captain,’ he pleaded, ‘have I ever given you any cause to doubt my loyalty?’

  Attticus’s head tilted a fraction of a degree to the right. ‘You have not,’ he admitted. ‘But some of your behaviour on this planet has been difficult to explain.’

  ‘I share your puzzlement.’

  The electronic grunt was noncommittal. It was not hostile. Nor was it merciful. ‘Understand me, sergeant. Whatever the nature of the weakness that assails you, the only aspect of it that interests me is what consequences it might have for our tactical situation. Will you hurt or harm the mission? Will you hurt or harm the company?’

  ‘I would never–’

  Atticus held up a hand, cutting him off. ‘If you do not understand what is happening to you, if it is happening despite your will, your intentions are irrelevant. So, therefore, is your loyalty.’

  Galba had no answer to that. The logic was unforgiving. It was also unassailable. ‘What do you intend to do with me?’ he asked.

  ‘I am not sure. I do not like uncertainty, brother-sergeant. I especially despise it in myself. But this is our position. Whatever the source of your knowledge, you were able to warn us about the attack by those vermin in the ruins. That was useful, if inexplicable.’ He tapped a finger against the surface of the table. ‘Describe to me again exactly what happened.’

  ‘I sensed something coming.’

  ‘Sensed how? Was it an intuition?’

  ‘No.’ He paused. ‘I heard whispers.’

  ‘The night of the first attack, you said you smelled whispers.’

  Galba nodded. ‘I did.’

  ‘My diagnosis was a warp-induced hallucination.’ Tap-tap-tap went the finger. ‘Events point to the inadequacy of that theory. Whispers, you said. Were they coherent?’

  ‘In the ruins, they were.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘“Warn them. It’s coming. Look to your right.”’

  The tapping stopped. ‘Very coherent. Were they in your voice?’

  ‘No,’ he said. He bit the word off with disgust. The memory of that voice – rust, skulls, stone – grated.

  ‘And now? Have the whispers spoken to you again?’

  ‘Not as they did then. But the need to burn the ruins is an articulated one. The words “burn it” are in my head.’

  Silence. Immobility. The warrior-machine deep in thought. Then, ‘The coherence of these messages is in keeping with the presence of a sentient enemy. The nature of the technology that would permit their transmission is beyond me, but I will set that aside for now. The content of the messages is what must be dealt with. And we were not harmed by those whispers in the ruins. We were aided.’

  ‘Do you think we have allies as well as enemies here?’ Galba asked. The idea felt wrong.

  ‘I am growing weary of hearing about invisible entities,’ Atticus said.

  ‘With respect, captain, you are not half as tired as I am of hearing from them.’

  Now the sound that emerged from the expressionless skull was an approximation of amusement. ‘I should imagine,’ Atticus said.

  That sentence bridged the gulf that had been growing between the two legionaries. Galba felt his breathing become easier. ‘What action should we take?’ he asked.

  Atticus was still again. Then he gave the table a decisive rap with his fist. The surface dented. ‘My misgivings are legion. But the first message in the ruins was valuable. Ignoring the second might be foolish, and its urging does coincide with my own strategic evaluations.’

  ‘We are going to destroy the structure?’

  ‘We will burn it.’

  Kanshell thought that this might be his last time in the settlement. The excavation operations had been called off. Kanshell did not know what, if anything, had been found in the depths, but it seemed that the X Legion had little reason to maintain a presence here any longer. The word circulating among the serfs was that the time had come for the colonists to stand on their own. The palisade was solid. Enough lasrifles had been distributed for the people to defend themselves. Now they had to show that they were worth the effort to save.

  This was the information that floated Kanshell’s way on the currents of conversation during the last few hours of the last day. It was surface chatter. Below were the important flows. The fears of the nights on the base were now tangled with the hopes ignited by the ceremonies held in the settlement. The serfs had been cautious, if fascinated, spectators. Only Kanshell had set foot in one of the lodges. Now there would be one last chance to take part. The currents roiled with unstated confusion, uncertainty, worry. Kanshell suspected that most of the serfs, even followers of the Lectitio Divinatus, would hold back. The fear of so visible a violation of the Imperial Truth’s secularism was too great.

  Kanshell knew what Tanaura would do if she were present. He could hear her voice urging the courage to stand by the truth, no matter what censure would follow. He had a spiritual debt to her. She had never given up on him. He could not back down. And if he truly had faith in the God-Emperor, that faith carried responsibilities. He would live up to them.

  Evening came. The work details ended, but the transports had not yet arrived. Kanshell could see no legionaries at all. Even the Salamanders had left shortly after the Iron Hands and the astropath had emerged from the depths. The independence of the settlement had begun. The jungle roared as if the saurians knew this and rejoiced. The guards on the walls were more numerous, and seemed to be getting better, if only through sheer concentration of fire, at fending off the beasts. Even so, the occasional flying reptile succeeded in taking off with a shrieking trophy.

  The colonists began their ceremonies. The rituals were the largest, most enthusiastic to date. All four lodges were bursting with celebrating crowds. The chants embraced in the air over the settlement. They became a round. Kanshell headed towards the primary lodge. His copy of the Lectitio was inside his work fatigues. On this day, he would advance to the centre of the lightweb. He would accept the welcome. He would engage in the full measure of worship.

  In the command centre of the base, Atticus addressed his officers. The Salamanders and Raven Guard were present, too. Khi’dem was not fooled by the courtesy. He knew that this was no consultation. He was present to hear the dictates of the commander of the Iron Hands. A decision had been made. An operation of some scale was about to begin. Khi’dem could not imagine what it was. The war had stagnated. He worried that Atticus’s level of frustration might be reaching the point where he would plunge into action for the sake of action.

  He was uneasy, too, about leaving the settlement undefended. He understood that the colonists could not be protected indefinitely. He agreed that they must be responsible for their own survival, once they had the means to do so. And he acknowledged that perhaps they now did. What he did not see was that the tactical situation had changed at all. He would rather fight a useful struggle at the settlement than rot in a holding pattern on the base, waiting for a mission that might never come.

  Atticus activated the hololith table that dominated the command centre. A projection of t
he settlement appeared. Highlighted was a representation of the ruins, based on the observable portions and extrapolations of those regions still inaccessible. A massive underground hemisphere in the centre of the plateau shone with the greatest brilliance. Runes appeared indicating the estimated depth from the surface of the ground to the top of the dome. Khi’dem frowned. Another dig? That did not seem worth this level of briefing. He grew uneasy.

  Atticus said, ‘With the help of Mistress Erephren, we have determined that the xenos structure is, in fact, a weapon. Though we have yet to pinpoint our enemy’s location, we know that this is the tool he is using against us. So the time has come to remove it from the field.’ He touched the table’s controls, and a marker of the Veritas Ferrum appeared, indicating its geosynchronous position over the settlement.

  Khi’dem’s unease turned into shock.

  The welcome was as warm as before. Kanshell was swept up in the ecstasy of worship again. The experience was even more intense, because this time he had come with no hesitation. He had come with his own joy, his own anticipation. And he had come with the object that would mark the event and the place with proper sanctity.

  Once again, Ske Vris walked with him towards the centre of the lodge. The woman’s smile was beyond joyful. It seemed to Kanshell he was not the only one for whom the event was charged with greater meaning than before. Ske Vris’s face shone with the triumph of immutable destiny. The chanting was supercharged. This was a night of climax. Perhaps, Kanshell thought, as he surrendered himself to the sensory overload of praise, he was completing something for these people as well as for himself. Perhaps, at some level, they realised that something was missing from their rituals. Now he was bringing the Emperor to them, and their worship would have a true centre.

  The tall, hooded priest stood in the same spot. Had he danced again? Kanshell was not sure. The details of reality were slipping away from him, the material falling before the might of the spiritual. He saw the world in fragments. It had become an endlessly shifting kaleidoscope, the fragments spinning away in scintillating bursts of the sublime. He grasped enough to be able to walk – he was walking, wasn’t he? Was he floating? – and he held coherent thoughts just long enough to know what he must do in each of the moments where he was granted some portion of awareness. He moved – flew, walked, floated, swam – forwards, breath by breath, beat by beat, measure by measure. He was almost at the centre, where all the vortices and lattices of light found their nexus. Here was where meaning died and was reborn, renewed.

  The priest said, ‘Have you brought an icon?’

  Civilisations rose and fell before he found his tongue. ‘Something else.’ He produced the Lectitio Divinitatus.

  Silence. The universe paused. Kanshell was suspended in a limbo filled with an infinite potential of meaning. Something immense transpired. Significance towered over Kanshell, its extent lost beyond perception. He vanished in its shadow, and the silence filled him with cold. What had he done? Had he offended? How?

  A hand reached into the limbo. The world coalesced around it. Kanshell could see again. Time advanced, but the silence continued. The priest took the offered book. He handled it with reverence. He lifted it towards the ceiling of the lodge. He spoke. ‘The word.’

  The silence ended in eruption. It was as powerful as the cry of a volcano, but it was the fullest paroxysm of celebration. Kanshell wept that he had done so well. The effect was beyond his fiercest hope. For the first time in his life, he realised that even he, the most insignificant of menials, had a destiny, and that his role in the Emperor’s plan might well be far more important than his state should permit.

  The priest took a step back. He knelt, and placed the Lectitio in the centre of the floor. The book was battered, dog-eared, curling. It was humble. But it was transformed in the nexus. It became more than words, more than teachings, more than a symbol. Kanshell saw it as the product and source of forces beyond his comprehension. The galaxy turned on the axis of that book. What had been, what was now, and what was to come were reflected and shaped there. His sublime joy was mixed with an awe just as sublime, and so there also came terror. He was too small. The meanings were too vast. If he looked closely, if he understood all, then he would be blasted to nothing.

  But would that be so terrible? Would that not be the culmination of his life? Was this not the greatest thing he could ever hope to accomplish? Was there any point in living a perpetual anticlimax?

  The priest was holding out his hands again, inviting Kanshell to join the book, to know all, to receive the gift of full revelation. Kanshell embraced the moment. He gave himself as an offering to the God-Emperor. He stepped forwards.

  Only he did not. His mind sent the commands. The impulses reached his legs. His body had lost the unity of self, and was slow to react. In the gulf between his thought and his act, the shadow fell. The flow of voices was disrupted by the harsh, merciless cacophony of machines. Engines roared. Heavy boots marched. A voice that held not even the echo of humanity gave commands.

  The lightweb shattered, went out. The song died. The world clamped back into place around Kanshell. He gasped at the shock. He stumbled, first out of weakness, and then again as the crowd rushed from the lodge, pursued by the anger of a weapon that walked and judged.

  ‘This superstition is at an end,’ Atticus declared. ‘So is my patience. So is this settlement. It is over. All of it. Now.’

  Kanshell fell to all fours. His head rang as running legs struck it. He curled into a ball, trying to ward off the blows. They did not last long. Even the most devoted of the colonists hurried to obey the terrible giant that had come among them. Only the priest and Ske Vris were unhurried. As Kanshell raised his head, he saw the two walk past the looming Atticus. Ske Vris had her head bowed in deference, but the priest, still hooded, stood straight. Then they, too, exited into the night. Kanshell was alone in the lodge with the captain of the Iron Hands.

  ‘My lord,’ Kanshell whispered. He had done nothing wrong. At the most important level, the spiritual one, he knew this to be true. But in the realm of secular laws, and in the eyes of the coldest of legionaries, he had trespassed. He did not beg forgiveness. He would not betray the truth of his faith.

  There were also beings for whom forgiveness was an alien concept.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, serf?’ Atticus said. The low electronic voice, barely audible over the rumble of transport engines outside, was terrifying.

  Kanshell opened his mouth. Nothing came out. There was nothing to say. No truth, lie or plea would make a difference now. His words would be as well spent trying to stop the fall of night.

  Galba entered the lodge and came up behind Atticus. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘they are gathered. If you want to speak to them…’

  Atticus turned to the sergeant. ‘I do not want to speak to these fools,’ he said. ‘But I will tell them where they stand.’ He left. Kanshell was forgotten. He was so far beneath notice that he could not retain the legionary’s attention for more than a few seconds.

  Galba remained behind. He looked down. ‘Get up, Jerune,’ he said.

  Kanshell struggled to his feet.

  ‘What were you doing here?’ Galba’s question was not rhetorical menace. He was genuinely puzzled.

  Kanshell had not known the true meaning of worship until he had embraced the teachings of the Lectitio Divinitatus. But he had experienced its simulacrum, and the object of that fidelity had been Galba. Of all the Iron Hands of the Veritas Ferrum, he was the one who stooped to see the serfs. He acknowledged the presence of the weak mortals. He was capable of kindness. He seemed, at times, to have an understanding, or at least a form of sympathy, for the pitiful beings that scurried about, fulfilling the menial tasks of the great ship. Futility had stopped Kanshell from answering Atticus. He knew Galba would not be any more receptive to Kanshell’s new truth than the captain. He also knew that he must be
open with his master.

  ‘I was making an offering to the God-Emperor,’ he said.

  Galba closed his eyes for a moment. Kanshell was surprised to see that a Space Marine could look tired. When Galba looked at Kanshell again, he wore a pained expression. ‘I should censure you. At the very least, I should explain the absurdity of what you are doing, and point out that you are acting in direct violation of the Emperor’s dictates and His wishes.’

  ‘Yes, sergeant.’

  ‘But I imagine that if you are able to surmount the ridiculous paradox of worshipping as a god a being who has forbidden precisely that belief, then I would be wasting my breath to point out your smaller lunacies.’

  Kanshell said nothing. He bowed his head in agreement, in humility and in defiance.

  ‘Has this cult become widespread among the serfs?’

  ‘It has.’

  The sergeant grunted. ‘The nights, I suppose,’ he muttered, more to himself than to Kanshell. ‘Irrational horror breeds irrational hope.’ His laugh was short, soft, grim. ‘Jerune, if you knew how much of the irrational there is to go around…’ He turned to go. ‘I have no interest in punishing you,’ he said. He gestured with his right hand, taking in the space of the lodge. ‘This will all be over with soon enough, anyway.’

  ‘Sergeant?’ Kanshell asked, but Galba kept walking. He started to follow, then remembered his Lectitio. He ran back to the centre of the lodge. The book was gone.

  Gunships and transports idled, ramps down. The Vindicators had arrived at the gates of the settlement. Engine of Fury had advanced inside the palisade, moving between and ahead of the Thunderhawks. The entire population, thousands strong, milled in the centre of the plateau, herded there by the warriors of 111th Company. Galba eyed the scene while Atticus climbed atop Engine of Fury. It occurred to him that the scene looked like an invasion. At a word, the Iron Hands could annihilate the population before them. Atticus’s impatience had found expression in the brutal efficiency of the operation.