Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  ‘The God-Emperor sees all,’ he said. ‘His hand lies upon all of us. The Emperor protects.’

  He stopped, the rest of the words hanging on his tongue. The skin of his arms prickled. He looked behind him, at the edge of the light from the open door. Blackness looked back at him, flat and unmoving. He turned his head. The memory of the light he had thought he had seen rose in his mind. But that had not been real. It had been his fear, and he had no need to–

  Hands came out of the dark, and broke his neck in a single movement.

  Storage Vault 62/006-895

  The Imperial Palace, Terra

  The warrior with no name came to life, and began to drown.

  Thick liquid was all around him, filling his lungs, wrapping his limbs, strangling him even as his hearts began to beat again. He could not see. He could not move. His body was folded, legs pressed against his chest, arms over his head. He struck out. Something hard met his hands.

  Questions and needs roared through his mind.

  Who am I?

  He needed to move.

  Where am I?

  He needed to breathe.

  What is happening?

  The questions screamed on unanswered. He did not know. He did not know anything.

  He needed...

  ...to stop.

  Calmness flooded him, blotting out every other instinct and thought. He let the stillness hold him for an instant, and then let his thoughts move again, one at a time.

  He could remember nothing: not how he had come to be where he was, not why he was there, not his name.

  But he knew that he needed to stay still, and calm. The truth that he needed would come.

  He waited, his hearts beating so slowly that they seemed not to beat at all.

  Understanding came piece by piece, appearing like the remains of a wrecked ship floating to the surface of a sea.

  He had been dead. He had been curled in the dark, not breathing, not a flicker of blood, nor pulse of a nerve signal moving through him. He had been that way for a long while. Now he had woken. There was a reason for that, and for the oblivion he had slept in. He could feel the answers just out of sight but getting closer. Other information came first.

  He was in a metal tank. Its sides were airtight and made of plasteel. At its thinnest point the walls were 7.67 centimetres thick. The fluid filling the tank was the liquefied residue of bioprocessing in the nutri-factories of the Somon Prime orbital city. The tank was one of several hundred stacked together in a storage vault beneath the Imperial Palace on Terra. The Palace might be under the watch of the Custodian Guard, and the stewardship of Rogal Dorn, but the millions within its walls still needed to eat in a time of siege. The stores held by the Palace had increased tenfold in preparation. That had been his way in.

  Curled inside his tank – floating in a soup of rendered flesh and biomatter – he had passed down through the transport chain from Terra’s orbital docks, and through the layers of the Palace’s security. Each time the biometric reader fields had passed over the tank they had detected nothing besides dead matter. No pulse, no bioelectric field, no shadow of life. Once inside the Palace, the tank had been stored. He had lain within his temporary tomb and time had passed, time that had now expired.

  Slowly he flexed his fingers. Their tips brushed the mechanism welded to the inside of the tank. There was no room for him to turn or move his arms, but he did not need to; the mechanism was just where his fingers would find it.

  A flex of force, and then a low clunk echoed through the liquid around him.

  He went still. This was a dangerous moment, when he was at his most vulnerable. Gently he pushed upwards with his legs. They met the lid of the tank, and he felt it shift. Stillness again. A rebalancing of muscles. He pushed again, and the lid rose. As it did, he twisted over, switching the pressure on the lid between legs and arms.

  Information was still coming to him from the fog of memory. The images of holo-projected plans and pict-captures were suddenly bright and sharp in his mind.

  He pushed the lid to the side, and his head broke the surface of the liquid. His eyes snapped open. A vast chamber extended away before him. Columns rose from the floor to meet a vaulted roof. Pyramidal stacks of cubes sat between the columns. Stencilled numbers ran down the floor between them. There was no light source, but his eyes gathered the scraps that there were and let him see. Nothing moved. Long moments passed.

  At last he let himself rise from beneath the surface.

  Still nothing moved.

  He let himself vomit up fluid from his lungs, then took his first breath of new life. The bio-soup in the tank smelt foul, a mixed organic and chemical reek that would cling to him for hours.

  He looked around, reading angles and the numbers on the floor, tasting the temperature in the air. He suddenly knew that he had to move. There was an access door, three kilometres away. He knew each of its code-lock settings. Once he was past that, there was a stair up one level, then a diversion through an air duct. He would have to break through three gratings, but unless they were fitted with very sophisticated alarms he would not need to change his route. There were other routes, of course – forty-three of them, all mapped from multiple sources, and as clear in his mind as if he had already walked them. He had twenty-three minutes and four seconds to be at his first waypoint.

  He reached back into the tank and felt the metal sides, until he found the two objects that he knew would be there. A tug, and they came free of the side of the tank. The blades were silver-black, double-edged, without grip or guard, like the shards of a broken sword. He flicked them free of slime. He understood their balance instantly. A more complex weapon would have risked detection by deep auspex scan, but the blades stuck to the inside of the tank were invisible to such methods.

  He replaced the tank’s lid, climbed down and began to run. He made no sound, and he moved without disturbing the gloom.

  In his mind the seconds flicked past.

  As he reached the door out of the chamber the answer to the first question he had asked came to him, as memory gave him a name.

  Silonius, he thought. I am Silonius.

  Two

  System transport vessel Primigenia

  Outer Terran approaches

  Maecenas came to his feet as the pilot cadre approached the Primigenia’s bridge. He had ended his show of sleep when the muster alarm sounded.

  The seconds remaining in his mental count were vanishing.

  First Attendant Sur Nel stared at him as he smoothed his hair and arranged his tabard. Contempt bled from her gaze. He smiled back. There was very little about what he was doing that involved anything as petty as spite, but he let himself have a second of pleasure at the thought that he would soon not have to smile at her at all.

  ‘Attend,’ the shipmaster called, as the main doors to the bridge began to open. All the bridge crew stiffened where they stood. Maecenas and Sur Nel both looked to the shipmaster. He was facing the doors, chin raised and eyes steady, the spun silver of his tabard hanging from his thin frame, the bones of his face sharp beneath his black eyes.

  Maecenas’ silent count flicked through one of its last seconds.

  The pilot cadre marched onto the bridge, ten figures in two lines. Plasteel armour plating clad their chests, the backs of their arms and shins. Domed pressure helmets covered their heads. On their shoulders, the heraldry of the Saturnyne Rams Second Solar Auxilia Cohort sat on its white-and-blue field. Maecenas knew their reputation. These were elite troops raised to do war on ships and void stations. Much of the work of overseeing supply vessels approaching Terra had fallen to them in the last years.

  A low buzz filled the air as the auxiliaries spread out across the bridge. The arc rings of their volkite chargers were glowing.

  Last to enter was an officer. The rank chevrons on his shoulder proclaimed him a
strategos of the elite Veletaris. He held a data-slate rather than a weapon, and the visor of his helm was hinged up, exposing a scarred but handsome face. He glanced briefly at the shipmaster.

  ‘You are Shipmaster Hys Nen Castul Hon-XXIX,’ said the strategos. ‘This vessel is the Primigenia, bonded to the Oberon Consanguinity, and bearing mixed cargos from outer gulf station Epiphus under writ and instruction for the supply of Terra.’ The strategos looked up. His eyes were pale gold. ‘Can you confirm that these details are correct?’

  Out of the corner of his eye Maecenas saw the shipmaster frown. The rivalry and distrust between the Saturnyne Ordo and the Jovian Void Clans was as old as the turning of the planets. Two centuries of alliance under the rule of the Emperor had reduced the rancour between the old enemies, but not removed it.

  ‘I can confirm that the details you have related to me are correct,’ said the shipmaster, with a stiff bow of his head. ‘In honour and loyalty I welcome you on board.’

  The strategos looked down at his data-slate. As he did his eyes flicked at Maecenas.

  The mental count of seconds reached zero.

  The exchange of hand signals looked like nothing.

  ‘Good,’ said the strategos. He drew and fired his pistol so fast that Maecenas did not have time to blink. The volkite beam hit the shipmaster in the chest and reduced him to ashes. Sur Nel managed to begin a shout before the beam flicked out again. The rest of the troops began firing a second later.

  It was over within a minute. The communication controllers died first, before their screams had even sounded. The rest followed.

  The strategos turned to Maecenas as the sound of the last shot faded. A smell of static and burning filled the air.

  ‘We are on schedule?’ asked the strategos.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Maecenas. He was already moving to the primary engine control.

  ‘The cargo was substituted correctly?’

  ‘Yes. It is exactly as required.’

  ‘And the ship’s course?’

  Maecenas frowned as dials spun under his fingers as he worked the engine controls. Now that he was here it felt strange. He’d thought that he would feel something more, some form of exultation. But he felt nothing, just hollow, as though he were about to lose something by finally casting off his false life and beginning anew. He turned another dial, and watched as a set of brass hands clicked around to the red segment of an ivory circle set into the helm control. Beneath his feet he felt a rumble as the Primigenia’s engines lit, and the ship began to accelerate through the void again.

  ‘It’s moving, course as before. They will notice something is wrong eventually, but by then...’

  ‘It won’t matter,’ the strategos said, and nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, raised his pistol and fired once. Lieutenant Maecenas V Hon-II managed to open his mouth before his last words were blown to dust.

  Gobi tox-wastes

  Terra

  The rad-wolves leapt into the glare. The light of the melta-torches caught the wet sharpness of their teeth. Myzmadra watched as a rad-wolf the size of a horse landed five paces away. Scales surrounded rows of red eyes running down the side of its muzzle. The rest of its pack bounded forwards behind it, hunger and instinct driving them towards the light and the smell of flesh. Myzmadra tilted her head, eyes steady, arms folded. One of the wolves snarled, muscle coiling under iridescent fur, then leapt.

  The rotor cannon screamed from behind her. The rad-wolf became a spray of liquid and meat. A torrent of tracer fire panned across the pack of wolves for a few seconds. Blood lacquered the rocks where the beasts had been.

  ‘You want to help next time?’ said Nis, as he stepped up next to her. The exoskeleton, wrapped around the scav boss’ torso, hissed as he moved. The barrel of his rotor cannon was still spinning down. The ammo feed leading from the hoppers on his back clinked against his legs. ‘You know how to use those, right?’ he said, nodding at her holstered guns.

  ‘If I did that kind of thing myself what would I be paying you for?’ she said, and turned away.

  The glare of melta-torches fizzed in her sight from where the scavengers were cutting into the hardpan. The crawler was drawn up on the other side of the dig site. She could see the silhouette of a figure standing on the vehicle’s roof, looking out towards the night on the other side. Like Nis, the sentry was wearing a crude exoskeleton and carrying a serious piece of weaponry. The rad-wolves had been coming at them ever since they got out of the crawler. When the scavs had started ripping into the crust layer, even more of them had come.

  ‘It’s the smell,’ Nis had said, once the first two packs had been cut down. ‘They can smell the dust and the burn from the torches. Makes them hungry. Makes them come looking to eat.’

  She squinted at the excavation. The pit was a ragged bite into the plateau’s surface, twenty metres across at its widest point, and five deep. Rock dust and powdered crystal sprayed up in the glare from the melta beams. The scavs were outlines in the haze. They knew their business, though; she had to give them that. They worked without stopping and even though they seemed to dig, drill and cut like starved beasts tearing into food, they were careful.

  She looked up as Incarnus came to stand beside her. Face hidden by the visor of his breath mask, limbs coated in a dark red body glove, he seemed even more like an insect than normal. He nodded down at the scavs in the pit.

  Yes, they are more precise and careful than you would think from looking at them, aren’t they?+ he said, his voice a purr in her skull.

  She tensed, and felt her skin prickle against the inside of her body glove.

  Get out of my head! she thought, pouring as much loathing into it as she could.

  Incarnus laughed, tilting his head back and then shivering. There was something smooth and unpleasant about the movement.

  My apologies,+ he said, still in her mind, and she felt clammy heat crawl over her scalp. +Anyway, your kind are so dull. So many safeguards and mental cut-outs. I would have to do some damage to do anything really interesting.+

  Get. Out, she thought, carefully. Or do you want me to see if I can shoot you before you can stop me reaching my guns?

  He recoiled as though struck.

  You would not dare. The operation...+

  You should know that there is always another way, Incarnus. Redundancy, that’s how we do things.

  He raised a hand, and she heard him take a breath to say something else.

  A cry rose from the pit. She turned and saw that the glare from the melta beams had dimmed. The scavs were clustering around something still hidden by the curtains of dust and vapour. She stepped forwards and jumped down into the pit. As though conjured up from the air, Ashul was at her side. Incarnus followed a pace behind. The scavs cleared a path as they crossed the bottom of the pit, casting puzzled glances at each other.

  ‘Light,’ she shouted, and a stab-beam swung over her as she bent down next to the path of bare metal they had uncovered. She brushed her hands across the dull surface, fingers searching. After a few seconds she found an edge, and then a corner. She looked up at Incarnus, ignoring the stares of the scav gangers.

  ‘Is it them?’ she said across their private vox.

  ‘Can’t say,’ said Incarnus, who bent down and placed his hand on the flat metal next to hers.

  ‘You can’t say?’ growled Ashul.

  ‘If it is them, they are barely alive.’ Incarnus shrugged, patting the dust from his gauntlets as he stood. ‘No thoughts. No dreams. No little sparks of consciousness for me to sense.’

  Myzmadra looked down at the exposed metal.

  ‘Get this out,’ she said, her voice loud on the night air. ‘There should be nine more close by. Be very careful. Any of them get damaged, and you don’t get paid. Any of them get destroyed, I have your boss’ agreement that half of you die.’

  They did as sh
e asked.

  The wolves came four more times while the scavs dug, and the rotor cannon chattered into the dark. She did not look around to watch the slaughter. Nis knew his business, and besides she found she could not look away as the metal blocks emerged from the earth. They found the other nine, one after another, and dug around them until they could lever them out.

  Eventually, ten blocks of dull metal sat on the hardpan, studded with bolts and crossed by reinforcement struts. Five were cubes, a metre square. The other five were large iron caskets.

  She nodded to Ashul.

  ‘Begin,’ she said. ‘We are running lean on time.’

  They started to work on the first block, removing covers from the sockets dotting the sides of the caskets. Incarnus attached tubes and wires to the ports and linked them to the pumps and vials they had brought in the crawler, hissing words to himself as he worked. Myzmadra and Ashul left him to it, and began to cut open the welded seams on the five metal cubes with compact lascutters.

  Some of the scavs paused to watch them.

  ‘Better hope this works as it should,’ muttered Ashul, as he glanced at the gangers. ‘Or we are going to have to get creative.’

  Incarnus was linking fluid feeds and power to the last casket.

  ‘It is them,’ called Incarnus. ‘First one is almost conscious. I can feel his thoughts firing.’

  Myzmadra looked at the horizon. Pale light had crept into the corners of the sky.

  ‘How long?’ she asked.

  ‘Five minutes,’ said Incarnus, ‘perhaps thirty, maybe fifty. As much of a miracle as this is, it is not... precise, nor without complications. Their bodies and minds have to reconstruct awareness, humours must rebalance, and nerves have to mesh with muscle. Oblivion must become waking.’

  ‘Hope that it is fast and less poetic,’ said Myzmadra, her eyes on the figure that had joined the rest of the scavengers.

  ‘What is all this wonder from beneath the earth, then?’ asked Nis, as he walked towards Myzmadra. His exoskeleton clanked with each step, the feed for the rotor cannon tapping against the frame.