He walked through the chamber without touching anything, and we all followed suit. Order was a myth amidst that mess. Rotting corpses from more species than I could quickly count hung from chain meat hooks, while whole and partial skeletons were bound to the walls or left in heaped piles among the chaos. Scrolls of parchment filled whole crates, while hundreds of datapads blinked in and out of battery-charged consciousness. Dozens of machines rumbled and hummed as they went about their function – on the deck, on the walls, on the ceiling.
Machine parts and weapons were scattered across the deck in disarray. Salvaged suits of armour lay here and there without any semblance of organisation. Every Legion’s colours showed in the cannibalised disorder, including a dozen in the cobalt of the Thousand Sons. Weapons from hundreds of cultures and eras were either preserved in shimmering stasis fields on marble plinths, or left to rust and corrode on the deck.
I picked up the golden halberd of an Imperial Custodian, turning it over in my hands.
‘It’s gene-locked to the warrior who once wielded it,’ said Abaddon, ‘but I can activate it for you, if you wish.’
I dropped it back onto the deck, still lost in what I was seeing. It looked as though a storm had swept through a war museum. The treasures of Abaddon’s pilgrimage across the Eye... A fortune in relics and cultural treasures, as well as a world of scrap and junk that held no obvious significance.
Abaddon, with surprising courtesy, gestured one of his mismatched gauntlets straight up. Hundreds of generators rattled far, far above us, bolted to the gothic arch ceiling.
‘Do you recognise it?’
I didn’t. Not at first. The room was too overwhelming. Most of the walls were bone, transmogrified along with the rest of the ship, but struts of browned iron and black steel worked in artificial synergy with the ivory architecture. They supported and reinforced the arching bone structure, providing the foundations for new machinery to be bound to the chamber’s deck, ceiling and sides.
I saw turbine reactors, heat exchangers, even what looked like a plasma cradle – though it was far too small to be a true plasma-fuelled generator. Three of the installations along one wall were plainly torture racks, complete with manacles and neural needles. There seemed to be no unity of form and function to the machines – the collection was eclectic to the point of seeming random.
Everything was linked by bound cables and threaded through with grey crystals. Each machine held court over a cluster of lesser engines, cogitators, monitors and generators. The entire left wall was given over to surgical tables and wall-mounted servitors armed with tools for bionic augmentation and the necessary microsurgery that always accompanied it.
I looked at them all, at the chamber in its entirety, at the formation of the clustered machines. Most of all, I followed the lines of power cables running between them. They formed shapes. Familiar shapes.
Each machine held the position of a star. When viewed together they were... constellations.
Skorpios Venenum, the poisoner. Feraleo, the great beast. Jeima and Inaya, the Emperor’s Handmaidens. And there, Sujittarus the Hunter, with his skirted consort, Orienne the Huntress. I could only guess what astral significance the machines’ alignment would produce if used in psychic ritual work. Abaddon had created a nexus of energies in more ways than one.
‘This is the night sky,’ I said. ‘These are the stars from the surface of Terra.’
My answer pleased him, if his slight smile was anything to go by. Yet he offered no further explanation.
‘Would you care for refreshment?’
Who was this disarming, unassuming pilgrim? Where was the choleric battle-king who commanded the warrior elite of the most respected Legion? I was at a loss for words. His inner sanctum was the hovel of a rabid collector, the workshop of a trained Techmarine, the sombre haven of a scholar, the armoury of a desperate soldier. All of it and none of it. He had seen more in his isolated travels than any of us, and it showed here in this shrine of memories.
The refreshment he offered turned out to be a clear spirit that left a faint burn on the back of the tongue. I am being generous when I say it had the raw chemical taste of engine coolant.
This ‘beverage’ came from a barrel with warnings of acidic toxicity, poured into flasks of twisted white metal. I had the uncomfortable feeling that Abaddon was actually making an effort to be hospitable. Telemachon refused to touch the liquid. I took a flask out of courtesy.
‘This is good,’ Lheor said as he drank the clear liquid. ‘My thanks, captain.’
I let my senses brush over Lheor’s mind, curiosity forcing me to seek any sign of deception. Unbelievably, the World Eater was telling the truth. He liked it.
‘It is adrenochrome,’ said Abaddon, ‘harvested from the adrenal glands of living slaves, and mixed with several artificial compounds, including a formula that I developed while trying to synthesise ectoplasma.’
I stopped looking at the false machine-constellations and stared at him.
‘You tried to synthesise Aetheria? You tried to artificially recreate the fifth element?’
He nodded. ‘Some time ago, now. I abandoned the endeavour as ultimately futile.’
‘You... you tried to concoct raw warp energy? Out of chemicals?’
‘Not just chemicals. I also used what you’d call “supernatural reagents”. This is the inert result, of course. The runoff, if you will, further filtered and blended with levels of alcohol that would kill an unmodified human.’ He paused, and looked at me for a long moment. ‘You seem to be struggling with the concept, Khayon.’
‘I confess that I am. What materials did you use?’
He grinned. ‘The tears of virgins. The blood of children. You’re familiar with the mysteries of the warp, so you’ll know how it always is in these matters. Symbolism is everything.’
I removed my helm, just staring at him, unsure if he was telling the truth. The air carried the scent of rancid bronze.
‘Funny,’ Lheor chuckled as he drained the rest of the drink.
‘I try, I try. There was also venom from one of the Neverborn that manifested aboard the ship several years ago, which troubled me until I deceived it into containment. Another few noteworthy ingredients would be the corpses of several psykers and Neverborn, left to slow-dissolve in cooled plasma cradles. I then siphoned the remaining slime through hexagrammically warded purifiers.’
He spoke as if detailed alchemical transmutation was a matter of daily chores. I wondered if there was any forbidden knowledge he had not at least dabbled in during his isolation.
‘I see,’ muttered Lheor. ‘How enlightening.’
‘Sarcasm is unbecoming of a warrior, Lheorvine. If it bored me to do it, it’s just as boring to hear about the process. In truth, I’ve left all of those experiments behind me now. Curiosity forced me to try, but I took little joy in the work. Most of my time is spent off the ship, as you can imagine.’
For the very first time, he took heed of the leatherbound deck of tarot cards chained to my belt. ‘That’s an impressive grimoire.’
The word ‘grimoire’ was for more theatrical practitioners of the Art than I, but I didn’t correct him.
‘Are you going to drink that?’ Lheor asked. I handed my flask to him without a word. ‘You should drink while you can,’ he chided me.
He had a point. Oh, the battles we have fought in the Eye over something as simple and primal as thirst. I have spent entire years of my life subsisting on chemical compounds, cancerous lake water, and even blood. I have butchered brothers and cousins for a hundred sins, but you cannot imagine how many have died to my blade in wars over clean water.
‘Strike me blind,’ Telemachon whispered from across the chamber. ‘The Talon.’
We moved over to him, where he stood before an armour rack locked inside a shimmering white stasis field. The hulking suit of black C
ataphractii armour was unmistakable, cast in blackened ceramite and decorated with Horus’s staring eye. The battleplate of the High Chieftain of the Justaerin. Abaddon in his age-bleached armour cannibalised from all Nine Legions looked a far cry from the warrior he had once been, wearing this ornate Terminator suit on the battlements of the Emperor’s Palace. Bolter scars and blade cuts showed across almost every centimetre of the ceramite. There was no question that Abaddon, before his pilgrimage, had always been found where the fighting was thickest.
Separate from the armour, an immense lightning claw rested on a plinth of its own. Its fingers were silver blades, subtly curved, each one a monstrous scythe in its own right. Adding to the weapon’s bulk was an ornate double-barrelled bolter mounted upon the back of the gauntlet. Its ammunition feed ports were sculpted as the wide mouths of hungering brass daemons. Scratches and dents marked the claw’s black surface,
The Talon of Horus. In stasis, it looked almost mundane. Lethal, vicious, deadly, but just a lightning claw. Just a weapon.
Telemachon’s shiver of pleasure was the strongest emotion I had felt from his mind since rewriting it. I sensed him salivating behind the burial mask.
Then I saw why.
Blood marked the Talon’s blades – dried patches of blood, smeared across the bright metal claws. Telemachon’s hand rested against the stasis field’s repressor aura, as though he could simply push through it and touch the Talon it protected.
Abaddon joined us, his inhuman eyes resting on the shielded weapon. For him it held less mystique yet more resonance. He had seen his primarch father bearing the Talon into battle a thousand times, lending the relic an air of familiarity, but he had been the one to tear the claw from his father’s cooling corpse while its blades were still wet with the blood of... of...
I exhaled softly, feeling the stasis field’s misty warmth against my face. ‘When did you lock it in stasis?’ I asked Abaddon.
‘Within hours of taking it.’ Abaddon was staring as well, though I could not say what emotion curdled behind his golden eyes. ‘I never wore it in battle.’
He started to key in a deactivation code to shut down the stasis cloud. My hand gripped his wrist with punishing force, but too late, too late. The restraining field quivered and failed.
Weapons have souls. The Martian Mechanicum has always known this, with their rituals to honour and appease the machine-spirits of their guns, blades and war engines. But a weapon’s soul reflects in the warp, as well. The very moment the stasis field collapsed and allowed the Talon back into reality, the weapon’s spirit – a thing of inconceivable predation – clawed at my mind.
The Talon’s murderous, shrieking closeness threatened me, from the killing blades to the fat-mouthed gun barrels parasitically bolted to its back. Corpse-stink, thick and hot and choking, emanated from the bloodstained blades in a choking aura. The dried, rich redness on the curving scythes pressed at my eyes with oily, liquid pressure. The weeping lament of a mourning father and a dying god was a screaming roar in my ears, sinking into my skull. Every single cut, scrape and dent upon the weapon had been earned on a battlefield where brother fought brother.
I was half a dozen steps back before I even realised I was moving, one hand pressed to the side of my head to contain the stabs of pressure pulping my brain meat. My vision swam, blurring into uselessness. I gagged on the reek of genetically purified blood. Its taste drowned my tongue. My axe clattered to the deck without me remembering I had drawn it.
‘Well, now.’ Abaddon’s voice came to me from a great distance. ‘What a sensitive creature you are, Khayon. Much more attuned than I realised.’
Mercy came, but not swiftly. The assault against my senses retreated, going grudgingly back like an ocean’s tide. I pulled breath into my lungs, feeling them expand in my chest. The air still carried that gene-forged death scent, but it was no longer ravaging me.
So many times in the years to come we would face the Blood Angels and their Successors, and each time the descendants of Sanguinius would suffer their own breed of madness in the presence of the weapon that crippled the Emperor and murdered their primarch forefather. I believe I felt a sliver of their pain that night aboard the Vengeful Spirit.
I rose from one knee, wiping my bleeding nose and mouth on my armoured palm. The blood looked black against the deep, metallic blue.
The stasis field was still down. The Talon’s presence pressed against my senses, but in a whisper now rather than a boiling flood. My brothers were watching me with varying degrees of comprehension.
‘That was unpleasant,’ I admitted.
They had reacted to the Talon’s unveiling as well, though not as strongly. I could feel Telemachon’s undercurrent of delighted revulsion at the smell of the bloodied blades, and the dull fire of Lheor’s ticking, aching mind.
Abaddon restored the field with the reactivation code. The discomfort vanished immediately as the weapon was taken out of time.
‘Unpleasant perhaps, but very educational,’ Abaddon replied at last. He moved over to a workbench, where he unceremoniously tossed his bolter with a loud clang of metal on metal. ‘So. Lheorvine was saying how you’d come to steal my ship? Do go on.’
A little late to lie, and I suspected he would see through any deceit, no matter how well I worded it.
‘The thought had crossed our minds,’ I replied.
Abaddon tapped his heart three times, in that formal gesture of honesty habitual to so many of the Cthonia-born Sons of Horus.
‘Don’t try it, as I’d be forced to kill you. I need you far too much to let you die, my brother.’ He paused, turning his golden gaze upon me again. ‘How is your sister faring, Khayon?’
I was following the play of his words without truly grasping the meaning. He knew we were coming, and he knew who we were. He was aware I had intended to claim the Vengeful Spirit. Now he claimed to need me – for what, I could not guess – but when he mentioned my sister, I felt my teeth clench together. Killing lightning wormed around my fingers, inspired into existence by my flash of anger.
‘Is something wrong, Khayon?’ Abaddon’s eyes glowed a knowing gold.
‘You are not taking her from me.’
The visible veins beneath his cheeks and in his neck seemed to run with a fluid darker than blood for a few heartbeats. I could scarcely read anything of his ironclad mind beyond the facade of calm he used as a shield, but I sensed a flood of something like lava inside his heart, beneath the outwardly generous smile.
‘I asked if she was well. That’s hardly a threat to take her from you.’
Lheor and Telemachon were watching me now. ‘Your sister?’ asked the World Eater.
Abaddon answered in my place. ‘The Anamnesis. Forgive me, I assumed it was common knowledge.’
Lheor gaped. ‘That she-wretch floating in the suspension fluid, down in the Core... That’s your sister?’
I had no desire to discuss such a thing at all, let alone here and now. Lheor chose not to take my silence as a hint. ‘Why would you let the Mechanicum do that to one of your own blood?’
‘There was no choice.’ I rounded on Lheor, forcing the snake lightning to dissipate into the chamber’s stinking air. I had to be careful – any sign of aggression would force his Nails to bite. ‘She was infected by one of the psychic predators of our home world. It pulsed its eggs into her mind, and the creature’s young devoured half of her brain tissue before they were successfully removed. She could become the Anamnesis, or live in agony as a stupefied shell of the woman she was.’
Speaking of it brought it all back. The late nights by her bedside, cleaning her when she lost control of her body’s functions. The endless weeping of our parents, who blamed the cranial surgeons for acting too poorly, and me for returning to Tizca too late. The nightlong deep probes into Itzara’s consciousness, seeking any part of her that remained untouched by the ravenous cr
eatures and the gouging surgery that followed.
I had given my younger sister to the Mechanicum outpost on Prospero, knowing their experimenters needed a living psychic human for the Anamnesis conversion. I knew it was a risk and that all previous attempts at creating the artificial gestalt had failed. But it was worth the risk, and I would do it again. It was the only choice worth making.
Lheor and Telemachon were looking at me in a new light. Abaddon was looking at me as if he could see and hear everything I was thinking.
He tapped his fingertips to his heart, three times. ‘Forgive me, brother. That wound is fresher than I realised. I meant no insult or offence.’
My teeth unclenched but the tension didn’t leave me. ‘It is fine,’ I lied. ‘I am... protective of her.’
‘Your loyalty does you credit,’ Abaddon remarked. ‘It is one of the reasons I summoned you.’
‘Summoned us?’ Lheor realised it in the same moment as I. ‘Sargon... The Word Bearer was no prophet. You sent him to Falkus, to lure us here.’
Abaddon spread his hands and performed a mannerly bow. His patchwork armour whined at the movement.
‘He is most assuredly a prophet, but, yes, he was the lure. It was hardly a masterful manipulation. You aren’t the only souls I’ve called, but you have the honour of being the first. I relied on Falkus’s desperation and his wish to avenge his Legion’s fouled legacy. I relied on Ashur-Kai’s hunger for any shred of foresight. I relied on Telemachon’s desire to confront Khayon. I relied on Khayon’s empathy for a slain Legion and his loyalty to Falkus, as well as his belief he could take the Vengeful Spirit by installing his sister as its machine-spirit. And as for you, Firefist, I relied on your wish to seek something more than the life of a blood-maddened raider, and your hunger to find a purpose. In short, I relied on warriors who wished to be more than the legacies of their diminished Legions. Everything fell into place with ease. Sargon was just the first breath that set the wind howling.’
Lheor’s stitched features locked in a scowl. I thought he was going to comment further, but instead he growled. ‘Don’t call me Firefist.’
The Talon of Horus Page 23