by Various
Agra had been everything they had known, but now it was a struggle to embrace the idea that it was just one world among thousands, perhaps more. The future was a whirlpool of unguessable possibilities that, if stared into for too long, threatened to suck you down.
It was likely, his friend had told him, that there wouldn’t be time to visit again.
‘See you on the battlefield,’ Brael had said to him.
‘Not if I see you first!’ Fellick had replied. His laughter had been audible through the second and first floors.
I wish I had your faith, Vika, Brael thought of his wife, eyes closed, after Fellick had left. He felt sure that his wife would have been able to accept these changes more easily. The star gods had been part of her world all her life.
And Bron. Brael imagined the look of wonder on his son’s face. This would have been even more exciting than watching the lights fall across the sky.
Sensing that he was being watched, he opened his eyes. A woman was looking down at him from the side of his pallet. She wore black. A single metallic icon sat high on her left breast. Her hair was straight and fell to the level of her strong jaw line. Her nose was long and straight, her eyes were dark and her gaze was direct. She showed no emotion as she stared down at him, the way Brael remembered Bron would examine a bug he had not seen before: distant, interested in what the creature might do next.
‘My lady,’ Brael attempted, without knowing if his words would make sense to his observer. ‘My name is Brael Corfe. I come from north of here.’
Still the woman looked down upon him, head cocked slightly to one side. No emotion.
‘I had a wife. A son. They died because the greenskins came. I have killed greenskins, before the star gods came, and I want to kill more.’
At this, Brael thought he saw the woman nod – the movement was so slight it was hard to be sure – then she turned and walked away. She wore a slim cloak, gathered at her shoulders by silver-trimmed epaulettes. The cloak billowed as she walked. Brael watched her pass the other pallets without a glance and disappear through the doorway to the stairs.
As was to be expected, the Adeptus Mechanicus have taken possession of the city’s meagre technological assets. They pay no attention to the populace, who regard them and their servitor entourage with barely disguised fear and disgust. Cornelia, my astropath, will remain alert to detect any unexpected transmissions bound for Mars, concerning their discoveries.
The population of Mallax and what little human life survives beyond its walls is the sole concern of the Inquisition.
She returned that night. She brought with her a lantern that threw out a beam of bright, pure light and cast a sphere of almost holy radiance around Brael’s pallet.
She was not alone. At first, Brael thought it was a child. When it stepped fully into the light, he was shocked to see that it was probably older than him by at least a generation. Its body, however, appeared to have stopped growing after six or seven summers. Its eyes were black pebbles set in the creases and folds that enveloped their sockets.
‘Brael,’ the woman said. Her voice was soft, her pronunciation of his name tentative, as if she were testing it, trying to match her pronunciation to his. ‘Brael Corfe.’
Hearing his name spoken thus eased the fears that had begun to creep through his mind.
‘Lucky man,’ she continued. Did she know more about him than just his name? ‘Talk me. Tell me.’
And so Brael told her about the last year of his life. He couldn’t avoid mentioning Vika and Bron, Vika’s belief in the star gods and how excited Bron would have been to see them. He told her about the lights in sky, the smoke from the mountains and the rolling tide of death that rushed down from them. He told her about the war, the loss of town after town, city after city. He told her of the men and women he had fought beside: those who had died, and those few who had survived. He told her about Grellax. He told her about Mallax, about the mines, the Holy Varks and the final assault. As he did so, he felt a weight rise up from him. He felt that all that he had done, all that he had endured had been for the good. The death, the suffering had not been in vain. The return of the star gods and their followers had given meaning to it all.
He lost track of time as he talked but the woman’s expression never changed. She just let him speak until, from the corner of his eye, Brael saw the stunted ancient beckon to her. Holding up a hand for him to pause, she bent an ear to what it had to say.
The creature’s voice was unnaturally high. The words that passed its lips were unintelligible, a stream of nonsense.
‘Precog?’ the woman repeated a pair of syllables from among the stream that the old/young creature had chattered at her. It nodded.
With that, she offered the runt a warm smile, nodded the briefest of goodbyes to Brael, who still felt there was much more he wanted to say, much more he wanted to tell her, and swept away through the ward, the globe of light causing those asleep on the pallets to stir as it passed over them.
In the dark again, Brael stared at the ceiling, purple after-images dancing before his eyes.
To facilitate swift linguistic assimilation, my acolytes moved among the populace, recording speech patterns, grammatical deviations from standard Gothic and the most prominent dialectical idiosyncrasies. The codiciers in my party began analysing and cataloguing the volumes kept in surprisingly good condition in the city librarium. It is evidence of the Emperor’s blessing that the last surviving human city on Samax IV should be Mallax – the city that clung most securely to its distant Imperial roots.
Alert for evidence of remaining xeno-trace or mutant gene-taint, every rumour was investigated, either by formal interview or by psychic scan.
[NOTE: Though some among our ordo frown upon the tolerance and use of sanctioned psykers, such as Gabriella, I have, on many occasions found the insights she gained from subjects, without their knowledge, and therefore without any attempt on their part to disguise the truth, to be invaluable. The initial survey of this world was no different.]
The splints came off the next day. Delighted, Brael was anxious to join a new company.
‘First you’d better learn how to walk,’ counselled the sawbones who had cut away the bindings and run his hands down Brael’s legs. The nurse who attended him passed Brael a pair of miss-matched crutches.
So Brael pounded his way around the ward, circuit after circuit. There were fewer people on the pallets now, the sawbones and nurses had more time to stand and joke with each other and with Brael as he passed them for the hundredth time. The black-garbed strangers also seemed to have moved on – the cause of some relief among the medical staff, Brael gathered. They had asked strange questions in their odd, stilted way of speaking.
There were no more visits from Fellick, Tombek or Freytha, so Brael just kept walking, cursing whenever he tripped, refusing assistance whenever he fell.
He discarded the crutches for a pair of battered sticks after four days. He was walking unaided after seven.
On the eighth day, they came for him: two men, wearing mirrored masks over their faces and a black uniform similar in design to that worn by the woman who had visited him.
‘Come,’ one of them said, his voice muffled slightly by the mask. Brael found it disconcerting to see his own face reflected back at him so perfectly from where the stranger’s face should have been.
Brael stood.
‘Your things,’ said the other stranger. ‘Possessions.’
‘I have none,’ Brael replied. ‘I have nothing after the greenskins. All I want to do is get back to fighting them.’
‘Come,’ repeated the first of the strangers to speak.
Even though he had discarded the walking sticks, Brael found negotiating the stairs an ordeal. Once at ground level, he was led out of the physic station for the first time in weeks.
Mallax was a ruin, but it was alive. There were people in the streets – Agrans mainly, but many groups of strangely attired men and women passed by. The
first time he heard an engine, he tensed, expecting a greenskin war wagon to round the next corner. A short way from the physic station sat a different kind of wagon. The back of the wagon was open and two of the newcomers sat in a covered cab at the front of the horseless vehicle. A uniform, dull grey in colour, on its metal sides it bore the two-headed eagle of the star gods’ followers – an icon that had been erected outside the buildings the newcomers had taken for their own offices and workshops. It had also been daubed on walls by grateful Mallaxians.
Brael’s escort indicated that he should climb into the back of the wagon. Brael was surprised to find that he wasn’t entirely willing to go near it, for it reminded him too strongly of the invaders’ engine-driven war machines. Steeling himself, he gripped the side of the vehicle. He felt the vibration of its hidden engine and thought of the much weaker pulse of the Varks in the dimly lit temple.
Setting one foot in a rigid metal stirrup fixed beneath the lip of the wagon’s rear edge, Brael climbed aboard with some difficulty, though he again refused any aid. He wanted the newcomers to see that he was fit to return to the militia.
As the wagon rumbled through the streets, a much sleeker machine passed, travelling in the opposite direction, carrying men in ornately-braided uniforms. Brael smiled and waved. They did not return his greeting. Brael promised himself that he would learn how men saluted each other in the new companies.
The wagon stopped in the shadows of the shattered eastern wall. Seeing the vast breaches in the ancient stone and metal, Brael thought back to the first waves of the greenskins’ attack. A high fence that appeared to have been woven out of impossibly thin metal wire had been erected around an old warehouse. Two more of the mirror-faced strangers stood at the gate that led into the compound. At a word that Brael did not understand, the gate was opened and he and his escort passed through.
At first, Brael thought that he had been brought to another physic station. The warehouse contained rows of pallets, half of which were occupied, men on the ground floor, women on the floor above.
Nobody was sure why they had been brought here. They had all, Brael learned, been delivered to the compound by a pair of the mirror-faced strangers. Some – those who had been here the longest – were beginning to take a pessimistic view of their situation. Others still talked of this being a staging post, from which they would be transported to join new companies that had already left Mallax for the front.
‘I hope they take us in one of their flying machines,’ a boy of nineteen summers told Brael. ‘To see the world from the air, like a bird,’ he marvelled. ‘Such wonders!’
Brael’s biggest surprise came when he saw a familiar face across the room.
‘Massau?’ Brael didn’t know whether to greet the slippery guildsman warmly or grab him by the throat. In any case, Massau avoided his gaze and continued to do so for the next three days.
Brael settled down on one of the vacant pallets; there was nothing to do but try to shut out the rumours that circulated through the warehouse, eat the food that arrived three times a day and continue walking to strengthen his legs.
On the fourth day, the warehouse doors were opened and the men and women within were ushered out. There were several wagons in the compound, motors idling. Unlike the open-topped vehicle in which Brael had been driven to the compound, these wagons had metal roofs and windowless metal sides.
Before climbing up into the rear of one of the wagons, Brael turned to the black-uniformed stranger who stood beside the wagon’s heavy metal door.
‘Are we going to join the new companies?’ Brael asked. His reflection opened and closed its mouth in time with his words, but the person behind the mask merely jabbed a finger towards the open wagon doorway. Brael noticed the stranger’s other hand move closer to the butt of a pistol holstered on his hip. Brael climbed aboard.
The ride was far shorter than Brael had expected. When the wagon’s rear door clanged open, he stepped down into a space outside the city wall that had been blasted by the greenskin artillery and had since been completely levelled by the newcomers. They had created a vast flat expanse of ground, upon which rested a collection of flying machines, the like of which neither Brael nor any of his companions could have imagined. There were craft of the kind Fellick had described to him, the kind that carried hundreds of men in their bellies. But there were others, much larger, from which trundled vehicles twice the size and weight of the wagons from which they had just dismounted. These flying machines were spiked with what Brael took to be weapons, as were the vehicles that rumbled down the ramps from their innards.
Having delivered its cargo, one of the flying machines took to the air and the noise was indescribable. Brael and his companions clapped their hands to their ears, some uttered prayers, one man just dropped to his knees, eyes following the machine as it rose swiftly into the sky, jaw slack with wonder and terror.
Off to one side of the flat expanse sat a jet-black craft that bore no external markings. A line of people could be seen filing up the ramp into its belly. Brael’s party was directed to join the line.
‘Where are you taking us?’ Brael demanded of the mirrorface who pointed towards the squat machine. Brael thought it looked more like an overgrown beetle than anything man-made. When the newcomer didn’t answer, Brael repeated his question, louder and in a manner of which he was used to his men taking notice.
In one hand, the mirrorface held a long stick. In a swift, smooth movement, he brought the stick down on Brael’s left knee. Still weak, it gave way and dropped him in the dirt. Seeing this, others stopped, looking down at Brael, then up at the mirrored guard.
Several other black-garbed guards moved up to support their fellow, sticks now held ready. The crowd moved back into line. Refusing an offer of a hand, Brael got painfully to his feet and followed suit. Even though the mirrorface had struck his knee, he felt a sick ache beginning to bloom behind his eyes.
The interior of the insect-like machine was almost as black as its outer skin. Long glowing strips buzzed and threw out a meagre light. Eyes adjusting to the gloom, Brael saw that he stood in a vast space, filled with rank upon rank of beds stacked three high. The ceiling was low. There were perhaps five hundred people crammed into this space. A murmur of fear, suspicion and anger began to circulate.
A dull clang reverberated through the metal walls and floor – doors shutting – followed by a hiss and a pressure building in their ears as if they were swimming down through deep water. Then other sounds, the rising tone of engines. The floor bucked and swayed gently. Had the beetle-ship left the ground already?
All I have suffered. All I have done. For this? Brael asked himself. The ache in his head had resolved itself. He knew that he would never see his home – his world – again.
‘Why?’ he asked, unaware that he had spoken his question out loud. The only answer he received was the cacophony of cries and shouts, wails of terror and despair that grew and resounded around the blank metal walls.
The absence of Imperial rigour on this world since the Age of Apostasy has allowed rogue nature to run unchecked, producing deviant gene-strains, among which exists a significant percentile of latent psychic ability. In some cases, this deviation has passed from the merely latent to the actual and manifest.
The process of tracing all latent and manifest psykers is ongoing, as is the process of separating them from the general population, and of mining their twisted psyches for the Imperium’s benefit and for the salvation of their souls. The untapped energies within them will feed the Golden Throne and maintain the light of the Emperor that shines out across the Immaterium.
The first of the black ships left orbit today, en route for Holy Terra.
The ends always justify the means.
In the Emperor’s name.
– Conclusion: ‘Inquisitorial communiqué 747923486/aleph/Samax IV’ Author: Inquisitor Selene Infantus. M41,793
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DAN ABNETT
Dan
Abnett is a novelist and award-winning comic book writer. He has written almost forty novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, and the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies. His latest Horus Heresy novel Prospero Burns was a New York Times bestseller, and topped the SF charts in the UK and the US. In addition to writing for Black Library, Dan is highly regarded in the comics industry for his work for both Marvel and DC, and has written a number of other bestselling novels, including Torchwood: Border Princes, Doctor Who: The Story of Martha, Triumff and Embedded. He lives and works in Maidstone, Kent.
Dan’s blog and website can be found at www.danabnett.com
Follow him on Twitter @VincentAbnett
WILLIAM KING
A legend amongst Black Library fans, the first of William King’s sixteen novels for the Black Library was published in 1999. He is the creator of the much-loved Gotrek & Felix series and the Space Wolf novels starring Ragnar Blackmane. His English language novel sales for Black Library total over 750,000 copies and his books have been translated into 9 languages. After 8 years away writing a trilogy of novels based in a world of his own creation, William King’s much anticipated return to the worlds of Warhammer has brought to life some of the seminal characters from the Warhammer background, such as the twin brothers Tyrion, greatest living elven warrior and Teclis, mightiest mage of his era, and the heroic Imperial Guard general Lord Macharius.
GRAHAM MCNEILL
Hailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill worked for over six years as a Games Developer in Games Workshop’s Design Studio before taking the plunge to become a full-time writer. Graham’s written a host of SF and Fantasy novels and comics, as well as a number of side projects that keep him busy and (mostly) out of trouble. His Horus Heresy novel, A Thousand Sons, was a New York Times bestseller and his Time of Legends novel, Empire, won the 2010 David Gemmell Legend Award. Graham lives and works in Nottingham and you can keep up to date with where he’ll be and what he’s working on by visiting his website.