Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  Up and up the three Headhunters went, winding backwards and forwards through corridors of cut stone, folding into the darkness beside a statue of a forgotten tyrant, listening for the sound of foot or breath that would mean danger.

  On and on, up and up. Like shadows. Like snakes coiling up the trunk of a tree.

  Central Reaches

  The Imperial Palace, Terra

  The labour brute was exactly where it was supposed to be, and died without a sound. Silonius lowered the body to the ground slowly. He had broken the brute’s neck rather than using a blade; blood was noticeable and difficult to conceal quickly. He dragged the body to the shadow of a pillar. It would be found, but there was no time to hide it properly.

  Crouched in the gloom next to his kill, Silonius began to strip it. He worked by touch, not taking his eyes from the corridors to his left and right. The labour brute was the same size as him, and wore an ochre robe and a black-and-white checked hood. A heavy medallion hung around its neck, showing the seal of a regional magnate within the Palace. That magnate had done just as his mission instructions had said, and sent the labour brute down to die in a passage beneath one of the Palace’s main processionals.

  Silonius slipped the brute’s robe on. The cloth reeked. He could smell the brute’s vat-broth diet, and taste the stimms it had swallowed to keep its muscles growing. The smell matched his own. Scent markers had laced the soup of biomatter in the tank he had slept in; the same reek saturated his own skin. With his shoulders hunched, and his hood up, he would look and smell like the creature he had just killed. He took the brute’s ownership medallion and slipped it over his own head. Last of all he took the bundle of scrolls the brute had been carrying, and slung them over his back. He started walking, feet shuffling and slapping on the flagstones. He passed down a passage, up a flight of stairs and then out into the crowds streaming down the processional.

  It was raining. Heavy drops pattered down on the granite slabs, and ran along channels into bronze grates. The clouds clinging to the inside of the roof half a kilometre above his head swirled in the microclimate’s wind. The crowd moved quickly. Menial workers clustered in herds, their clothes hanging from them in sodden folds. Teams of serfs bore canopies of patterned fabric or sheet metal, sheltering men and women of higher status. Groups of servitors moved against the flow, following their functions with blind determination. There were soldiers too: warbands in personal heraldry clustered around their paymaster, marching ranks of men and women bearing the emblems of eagles, hounds, hawks and other beasts on their pennants.

  Silonius took the entire scene in at a glance. His eyes found the Imperial Fists standing sentinel on the upper balconies above the main walkway beyond the veil of rain. He found the hidden watchers a second later: hunched behind their camo-cloaks in the high niches, looking down at the river of humanity through gunsights. There were no Custodians that he could detect. That was good.

  He checked his mental count of time, paused for three seconds and then shouldered into the press. Rain began to soak him. Most of the crowd made way. Some called out to him as he shoved past them, but he did not respond. The labour brutes were mute for the most part, and his silence was expected. The count went on in his head, the beat of the seconds passing matching his steps.

  A figure rammed into him from the left and almost fell. Hands gripped his robes.

  ‘Cursed fool, get out of the way,’ spat the figure. Silonius saw a flash of a gaunt face and dark beard, and then the figure was gone. Silonius felt the weight of the metal sphere the man had slipped into his hand. Needles snapped out of the sphere and began to jab into his skin rhythmically. The rhythm became a pattern, the pattern information, and the information a new set of memories unlocked in his mind. He walked on, the rain drumming against his skull, the seconds ticking past.

  Ten paces, and he brushed past a herald leading a pack of felids on silver chains.

  A metal cylinder was now in his hand.

  Another fifty-one paces, a swerve to turn around the statue of a bull, another brush of contact and another object to vanish beneath his robe.

  More seconds passed, his steps following a pattern threaded through time and space as he moved through the crowd beneath the gaze of the sentinels of Terra.

  At last he saw a rain canopy of golden fabric swaying above a tracked carriage ahead of him. Six labour brutes, in robes and hoods identical to his, held the awning up on long poles. Raindrops burst on its shining surface. He quickened his step. Silver mesh screens hid who rode within the carriage. No one noticed as he stepped from the crowd and took one of the poles that held up the canopy. The brute that had been carrying the pole took the bundle of scrolls from Silonius, and vanished into the crowd. It was so casual and quick that it was as though it had never happened at all.

  He passed through the Unity Arch, beneath the guns of the guards and through the sweeps of auspex fields. No weapons were permitted beyond the Arch, and he watched the warbands of the Terran nobility strip their gear under the eyes of sentinels in eagle masks. A lone Knight war machine stood before the Arch, its towering bulk seeming small beneath the gilt pillars. Its cannons hung relaxed at its side, but its head moved ceaselessly – back and forth, back and forth, like a dog set to watch on a threshold. Silonius looked up at it as its gaze hovered on him for a second, and then swept past. Moments later he was through the Arch, and another step on his path was complete.

  The canopy above the carriage was furled as it began to ascend the Anavros Stair. No one noticed that one of its bearers had vanished. In the gloom of a side passage, Silonius found the grating in the floor and dropped into the darkness of an air duct.

  The rest of his equipment came next. He found it a piece at a time: the rounds for his boltgun in a sump pool, the firing mechanism wrapped in oiled fabric beneath a tile, the plates of his armour in a dozen different niches. Some of the items had no purpose that he knew – a cluster of metal shards, a silver sphere, a set of metal rings – but he retrieved them all the same. A different agent had planted each item over the last decade. None of them had known of more than one location, and most had been disposed of after they had performed their task. The explosives, melta charges, blind grenades and haywire detonators came last, pulled from their hiding places and settled into pouches across his chest.

  By the time he reached the inner reaches of the Palace he no longer wore the robe of a serf. Plates of armour and ballistic fabric covered his flesh. His form was a blur, the substance of his outline dissolving into textures of light and dark. He moved fast, never pausing, or hesitating.

  There was no sign of the Custodians, and he could not detect even the slightest hint of their recent presence. That could only mean one thing: the Emperor was absent from His seat of power. For an instant he wondered where the Master of Mankind was. He discarded the question. It meant only that his mission was simplified.

  He paused when he reached the Dome of Illumination. Crouching on a ledge high above the walkway that circled the abyss beneath, he watched water fall from the mouths of the three statues which bore the kilometre-wide roof on their shoulders. The water roared as it struck the vast crucible far below. Above him, dawn light was falling through the hundred-metre-wide aperture in the vast dome.

  The target was close. In fact it was a few hundred metres above his head, but layers of rockcrete and plasteel meant that he would have to take one of the doors that led from the walkway below. He knew which door he would take, but he could not take it yet. The moment was coming, but it was not here.

  Not yet.

  Three

  System transport vessel Primigenia

  Inner Terran approaches

  The Primigenia slid through the void towards Terra. Space became more crowded with every second. Ships and void stations filled the outer orbits. Even with tight control over which vessels could approach this close, there were hundreds moving to and fr
om the planet. Many sat in void docks, regurgitating their cargos into vast stores. Then there were the orbital plates. Old before Unification, they were like cities cast from Terra and left to hang in the heavens.

  Around and between them floated strings of weapon platforms. Monitor craft moved amongst stations and cargo ships in shoals. Each monitor was small for a warship, but bristled with firepower equal to warp-capable craft many times its size. Imperial Fists battle-barges and cruisers stalked amongst the other craft like lions. And larger than all of them, hanging above Terra like a second moon, was the Phalanx. In all the Imperium, there was no warship larger, or mightier. Even the Gloriana-class craft fell short of Rogal Dorn’s fortress flagship. It held station on the edge of Terra’s grasp, looking both inwards and outwards: the guardian standing over the last gate.

  Past and through this throng, the Primigenia surged on. The monitor craft locked to its side transmitted clearance codes as it entered into Terra’s outer control sphere. A last check with the pilot cadre on the Primigenia’s bridge confirmed that all was well. Neither the monitor nor any of the other vessels noticed the shuttle that slipped from the cargo ship’s rear launch bay.

  The first sign that anything was amiss came when the Primigenia needed to make its first turn to synchronise its course with the orbital dock. Signals passed from the dock to the Primigenia and its monitor craft when it failed to alter course. No response came from the pilot cadre on the Primigenia’s bridge. Alerts began to sound on the monitor craft. Assault troops began to run to the docking limb linked to the Primigenia. Five seconds after the cargo ship failed to respond to the signals, warnings began to shrill through the orbital defences.

  Alarms began to sound across the orbit of Terra. Gun platforms rotated to face the Primigenia. Commands flashed between the nearest warships. Vessels close by began to scatter. Chains of other ships queuing for the orbital docks broke apart. Those ships closing on the outer orbits cut their speed.

  Signals battered the Primigenia. It burned on, silent, falling towards Terra like a dagger.

  Beacon tower 567-Beta

  Gobi tox-wastes, Terra

  The tower sat on the edge of the hill-line ahead of them, jutting up into the sunrise like a tooth. The strike team had dumped the crawler just over the horizon, and run the rest, striding through the dark as it faded to day. The pace sent breath sawing in and out of Myzmadra’s lungs. The glands embedded close to her heart dumped pain suppressants into her blood.

  The five Space Marines had not slowed from the moment they had dropped out of the crawler. She could no longer tell which one was Phocron. They moved as one, speeding over the ground like oil. Ashul had peeled off a kilometre back, found a shooting point and settled down to watch the tower. Wrapped in a cameleoline shroud, staring down his rifle sight, he was the strike team’s eyes as it ran through the last of the light.

  ‘Five hundred metres out. No movement,’ came Ashul’s voice in Myzmadra’s ear. ‘Large heat signatures inside. Machines most likely. Twenty human-sized signatures. None outside. If they have any sentries, they are heat-baffled.’

  ‘Low likelihood.’ Phocron’s voice cut into the vox, growling with the echoes from the inside of his helm.

  Myzmadra ran on, feet dancing over the dust and broken rock at the bottom of the dry river bed. The five armoured warriors were thirty metres ahead of her. She could hear the low whir and buzz of their armour. Behind her Incarnus was loping along, long arms swinging as he fought to keep up.

  ‘One hundred metres out,’ said Ashul. ‘There are three on the roof now. They are lighting up lho-sticks. Nice.’

  The course cut by the dry river bed curved away to the right. On her left, Myzmadra saw the tower rise from the ground just set back from the river bank. A cliff of loose soil and rock marked the outside of the bend. Phocron and the other four warriors took it in a single bound.

  ‘The three on the roof still haven’t seen you,’ said Ashul.

  She could see the tower clearly now. She had seen it before of course, its shape and details familiar from pict-captures. It was neither large nor impressive, just a square block of rockcrete and plasteel rising from the hills at the edge of the tox-plateau. Gun barrels jutted from firing loops in its flanks. Crenellations ran around its top, and a single door was set in its side. It was just what it seemed: a worn and half-forgotten marker at the edge of desolation. Worthless by almost all estimation. Almost all.

  Myzmadra scrambled up the bank. The five warriors were sprinting towards the door at the tower’s base.

  ‘They’ve heard you!’ called Ashul. Myzmadra heard a cry from the tower top. Her pistols were in her hands. Incarnus was just cresting the river bank behind her.

  ‘Execute,’ said Phocron. He was not even breathing hard.

  A sound like the flutter of wings rippled through the air above her. The cries from the top of the tower vanished.

  One of the five warriors fired. A white-hot line punched from his weapon’s muzzle and struck the tower’s door. The air screamed with heat. The door became a spray of molten metal. The warrior with the meltagun ran through the breach. The rest were just behind him.

  Myzmadra triggered the glands next to her heart with a single thought. Stimms dumped into her blood as she sprinted towards the glowing wound of the door. Gunfire boomed within, rolling on and on like thunder. She came into the first chamber. Chunks of meat and ashes covered the floors and walls. Explosions flashed down the spiral staircase bolted to the wall.

  She was not looking at the corpses, or listening to the brief screams from above. Everyone in the tower needed to be dead within ten seconds. Any more than that and there was a chance of them sending a distress signal. That would not be happening, though.

  Her eyes scanned the walls and floor. The plans had not been specific on where the hatch would be.

  ‘There,’ said Incarnus, panting as he came to a halt beside her. Her eyes followed the direction he was pointing and saw it. A square hatch sat flush with the floor, half covered by a canvas sleeping cot. She kicked the cot away, and bent down. The lock was hidden behind a thin access panel. The cogs-skull emblem of the Priests of Mars looked up at her from intermeshed wheels and gears.

  She swore. Incarnus looked over her shoulder, saw the lock and added his own choice words.

  ‘Melta charge?’ she asked. He moved past her, shaking his head as he crouched next to the lock.

  ‘That would do too much damage to the conduit,’ he replied, eyes flicking over the exposed lock. ‘The intel didn’t include the key to this.’ He shook his head. ‘I can crack it, but it’s going to take thirteen minutes.’

  ‘Too long,’ growled Phocron, as he stepped down the spiral stairs. He had pulled his helmet off and his armour was flecked with drying blood. ‘We have to be active in nine minutes.’

  Incarnus shrank back as the warrior loomed above him.

  ‘It’s five centimetres of plasteel and ceramite, the only way through–’

  Phocron punched down into the lock mechanism, closed his fist and wrenched the hatch out of its setting. Chips of rockcrete fell from its frame as he tossed it aside.

  ‘Proceed,’ growled Phocron. Incarnus uncurled from where he had crouched, glanced up at the warrior’s impassive face, then back at the ragged hole in the floor. He nodded, and dropped into the space below. Myzmadra followed, unfastening the pouch that had sat across her back for the journey across the plateau.

  The shaft under the hatch dropped straight down into dust and darkness. She lit a stab light and swept the beam through the dark. Incarnus winced and cursed as the light found his face. She saw his pupils shrink from the size of coins to pinpricks.

  ‘Cut the light!’ he hissed.

  ‘I need to see,’ she said, panning the beam away from him.

  ‘Not as much as I do,’ he muttered, but dropped his hands.

  Th
ey were crouched in a rockcrete-lined tube. Bunches of cables ran along the walls, which stretched beyond the reach of the light. Brass-cased machine blocks were bolted to the tunnel walls just below the access shaft. Strips of parchment hung from them, stirring in the sudden flow of air. Incarnus already had a bundle of tools out and was breaking the wax seals on the casings. Seconds later he had the machine blocks open. Pulsing lights and whirring clockwork filled each of them. Incarnus paused, eyes scanning the contents, fingers tapping on his chin.

  ‘Yes,’ he said after a moment, and held out an open hand without looking around. Myzmadra placed the objects from her pack on his palm. There were three of them, each no larger than a bolt shell. In form they resembled crustaceans made from polished chrome. Tendrils of silver cable hung from them, making them look like the fresh catch from a sea of quicksilver. Incarnus slid them into the exposed mechanisms, fingers snapping the toothed ends of each tendril onto a different cluster of wires. The silver objects shivered and then pulled themselves into the mechanisms. Myzmadra watched them squirm into the cogs and wiring, wondering briefly what they were and who had made them.

  ‘They are something complicated made to do something simple,’ said Incarnus, looking up at her. She felt the tingle of static on her scalp and snarled. He raised his hands placatingly. ‘Sorry, your mind was almost shouting your question. Difficult to miss.’

  She composed her face and looked down at the device on her wrist.

  ‘They are ready to transmit?’

  Incarnus nodded.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, and looked up the shaft. Phocron was standing above the opening. He looked down at her as the stab-beam touched his armour. Its hue was black in the direct light, but for a second she had seen scales sketched in blue and green across the plating. ‘Ready and standing by,’ she said.

  Phocron nodded, face expressionless.

  ‘Go,’ he said.