Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  Stasis fields enclosed the granite blocks that the corpses lay on. As Archamus approached he could see the remains under the layers of cold light: a charred hand, its fingers curled into a claw; a bare torso, the ragged edges of its meat weeping frozen beads of blood; an exploded skull laid out in wet fragments. Armour plates and weapons lay beside them, arranged like grave goods beside warriors from a less enlightened age.

  Do we truly live in an age of enlightenment any more? he wondered, as he stepped into the cold glow around the stasis fields.

  He looked down at the nearest slab. A collection of limbs and lumps of burned flesh lay in the rough shape of a corpse. Three bolt shells had hit it in the chest, one after another, in a neat line from gut to neck. The rest of the damage had come from the corpse being in the blast radius of a demolition charge. Even torn to shreds, it was clear what the corpse had been when it lived. It was a Space Marine.

  ‘What do you see?’ Dorn’s voice came from the dark beyond the glow of the stasis fields. Archamus moved on, not answering straight away, knowing that while a reply was required, it was also expected that his response be a considered one.

  Archamus frowned at the remains nearest him, and then glanced at the others.

  ‘These are the dead we took from the Investiary. An infiltration and sabotage team. Six members in all. Light armaments and armour,’ he said.

  ‘But what else do you see?’ asked Dorn, closer but still not within the circle of light.

  Archamus leaned closer to the corpse that had caused his frown. All that was left of it was the torso, which sat on the granite like a butchered portion of meat.

  ‘This one has signs of slight muscle atrophy,’ he said, leaning his head to change the angle of his view. ‘If the others were intact I am guessing they would show the same. In our kind that might be the result of a bio-weapon, or some malfunction of gene-seed. But that is not likely.’ He straightened up. ‘The damage was from long-term hibernation in a sus-an coma. They were asleep here on Terra. They were woken for this... task.’

  ‘And...’ said Dorn stepping closer, the pale light catching the sharp edges of his face, and the eagle heads carved into his armour. ‘Beyond that what do you see?’

  ‘This was planned a long time ago. The routes in, the layout of the Palace, the coordination of different assets to enact multiple operations at the same time. This is not something that was thrown together. This was laid down years ago. Before the war even began, perhaps.’

  Dorn stepped up next to the slab. In the cold light his armour seemed silver, his hair the white of frost.

  ‘They had time,’ said Dorn, softly. ‘They had all the time they would need to prepare, to gather information, to plan.’

  ‘In the time before the Massacre at Isstvan,’ said Archamus, ‘while they wore the cloak of loyalty.’

  Dorn shook his head, eyes still fixed on the flesh and bone on the slab.

  ‘Before that. This is a treachery older than Isstvan.’

  ‘But before Horus turned, what reason would the Alpha Legion have to plan an attack here on Terra?’

  ‘Every reason you can imagine,’ said Dorn, and turned away.

  Archamus watched him for the moment, but the primarch did not add to his words. He looked back at the remains, a frown forming as he took in the details of grenade and ammunition harnesses.

  ‘What were they hoping to achieve?’ asked Archamus at last. Dorn turned. Archamus gestured across each of the slabs. ‘The damage to our orbital defences will be repaired. The Damocles Starport will be repopulated and return to functionality. The riots will be quelled. The attack on the vox-network served only to mask the other attacks, and if anything has alerted us to a weakness. What purpose was there in any of this?’

  ‘The purpose was to show that they could,’ growled Dorn.

  Archamus shook his head.

  ‘There must be something else, something they have gained by doing this?’

  Dorn glanced sharply at Archamus, and then pointed at one of the bodies on the slabs. Of all of them it was the most complete. Only its head was missing. Pieces of skull lay above the ragged stump of its neck. A piece of jaw and cheekbone hung from a shred of skin.

  ‘Have you noted this one?’

  Archamus looked at it.

  ‘Killed by an excellent shot,’ he said.

  Dorn nodded, but his face remained fixed.

  ‘A shot I did not make,’ said Dorn. ‘I know where each of the others took their targets, and how they fell. This kill was not mine.’

  ‘A lucky shot by one of us through the blind grenade fog?’

  Dorn shook his head.

  ‘This was a clean and deliberate kill.’

  Archamus looked at the corpse again, his eyes moving across the shards of skull laid out where the head should have been. He blinked, allowing his eyes to find details. After a minute he nodded, and let out a long breath.

  ‘The shell was not explosive.’

  ‘Quicksilver,’ agreed Dorn.

  ‘And it entered just above the jaw, and blew out the crown of the skull with the initial impact.’ He turned to one of the other plinths and gestured at it. Servitor eyes saw the movement from where they watched at the chamber’s edge, and the stasis field vanished. Blood began to ooze across the stone from the chunks of flesh. Archamus picked up the bolter that lay on the slab beside the remains. He gestured again, and the field blinked back into being. He turned the bolter over, snapped the clip out and clicked the topmost shell free. ‘Stalker rounds,’ he said, holding one up.

  ‘Neither I nor the Huscarls were using such ammunition during the battle,’ said Dorn.

  ‘So this one,’ Archamus nodded at the headless corpse, ‘was killed by one of his own.’

  Dorn gave a single nod.

  ‘That means that not all of them died in the Investiary,’ said Archamus, looking down at the shell in his hand. The brass casing and polished tip gleamed in the cold light. ‘One of them escaped, and killed his brother in the process.’

  ‘Brotherhood is a term that does not apply to the Twentieth Legion,’ growled Dorn.

  Archamus was still looking at the shell.

  ‘This was not panic. This was an execution. Whoever did this is here, on Terra, and they killed their own to ensure that they went alone.’

  He looked up at Dorn.

  ‘Why?’ asked Archamus. For a second he thought he saw a glimmer of sorrow in the primarch’s face.

  Dorn reached out and took both bolter and shell gently from Archamus. He slid the shell back into the magazine, loaded the weapon, gestured and replaced it beneath a stasis field.

  ‘What is going to happen is not going to be easy,’ said Dorn. ‘I am sorry that it must be you. You are the last of my first sons, and I would have preferred that another take the burden that you must carry.’ He paused, and breathed out slowly. ‘There is something I must ask you to do for me, my friend.’

  ‘Of course, lord. Your will is my–’

  ‘There is no need for formalities here, not now. Not with what I am going to ask of you.’

  ‘Request or order, they are the same to me, lord.’

  Dorn gave him a long look, and then nodded slowly.

  ‘You are right. This is the beginning of something. There are greater wheels turning the fate of this war, but I cannot ignore what has happened. Neither can I fight it as I would like.’ He paused. ‘I need you to defend the Legion, and Terra. I need you to be a praetorian to praetorians.’

  ‘Have I not always been that, lord?’ replied Archamus.

  Southern refuse sprawl

  Terra

  The air that touched Silonius’ face was cold, and smelt of burning refuse and rotting waste. He stood for a moment and breathed deeply, letting the scents fill his nose, and the cold his lungs. Heaps of smouldering rubbish
loomed above him. Smoke coiled from their sides, and the daylight falling through the pollution layer was yellow and rotten. The crevasse behind him led down through a maze of rock into the collapsed strata of Terra’s history.

  It had taken him two days to make his way down through the Palace to the forgotten door. He had moved quickly at first, relying on speed and the chaos of the moment to protect him. Later, as the shock of the attack had drained away, he had moved more slowly, creeping and sliding through the edges of the security net that was clamping tight over the Palace. Then he had gone into the underworld, and begun his journey up through the crushed cities and caves. He had needed to kill four times. Nothing challenging, but necessary if he was to reach his rendezvous on time. He had kept his armour, but shed the spent demolition equipment piece by piece. Some lay in the Palace, some in the dark of the world beneath.

  He took another breath. He was somewhere in the midden heaps south of the parapets of the Dhawalagiri Prospect. Not his preferred surfacing point, but acceptable. He would be able to reach his primary rendezvous if he made good time.

  He pulled out the labour brute’s robe that he had worn to move through the Palace, and pulled it on over his armour. Within half a kilometre it would be so daubed with ash and refuse slime that he would seem like one of the scrap hunters. He checked the direction of the light and then began to lope across the burning ground.

  Bhab Bastion

  The Imperial Palace, Terra

  The wind cut across the roof of the world. On the parapet of the Bhab Bastion, Archamus watched as the glow of the sun began to sink behind a thick layer of cloud. There was ice in the air, and the taste of snow. He thought of Inwit, and the winds driving the snow from the night. Dorn stood beside him, hands on the stone of the parapet. Both of them were armoured, and their cloaks rippled and furled in the wind. The tower top was deserted apart from them, and neither had spoken since they had left the vaults far beneath.

  ‘You must do this alone,’ said Dorn without looking away from the line of light on the horizon. ‘You may claim whatever resources you need with my authority, but the knowledge of whom and what you hunt will remain with you, and only you.’

  Archamus was silent.

  ‘Speak your thoughts,’ said Dorn.

  ‘That will make it difficult to discover what the Alpha Legion intend. Knowledge defeats secrecy. We should cut the ground away from under them. There should be no place for them to hide. Every door they try should be barred, every weakness made strong.’

  ‘A good way, but for this it cannot serve.’ Dorn paused and looked down at where his hand rested on the stone of the parapet. ‘Tell me, what did you feel when this began?’

  ‘When the Primigenia exploded...’ Archamus felt his words catch as an echo of that instant shuddered through him. ‘When the alarms sounded there was a moment... a moment when I thought that it might be real. That we might have lost before we even began to fight.’

  Dorn gave a short, bitter laugh.

  ‘Clever is it not? Clever and vile.’ Archamus saw the lines of his lord’s jaw harden. ‘“Such are we that in this art of war are like unto serpents, to lie out of sight, to strike swift, to carry such poison in our mouths that men fear to tread where we may lie.” My father once quoted those words to me when I asked Him of the Twentieth Legion’s ways of war. The true threat is not what they plan, or what they will do, but what the questions will do to us.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Archamus. He felt suddenly cold, as though a ball of ice were growing in his guts.

  Dorn watched him for a second, and nodded.

  ‘Remember what you felt when the attack began. Remember the shock. Remember the way that your instincts, good instincts, pulled you to act, to see threats that were not there. That is Alpharius’ way, and the way of his Legion. They are the shadow of a monster thrown on a wall, made greater by fear. As soon as you know they are there, you begin to look for them, to wonder what they might be doing, what their end might be. You see shadows and believe them real. And then you begin to doubt your eyes and ears, and then the true threat appears, and it is too late.’

  ‘And so none can know they were here, or are here still,’ said Archamus carefully. Phantom shivers ran up and down his bionic limbs.

  ‘My brother was cradled in lies,’ said Dorn. ‘Begin to think about what he is doing and you hand him his greatest weapon. This is his doing, even if others strike for him. His sons are the same. They have many heads, but all carrying the same venom.’ Dorn was still watching him. ‘But I cannot allow the threat to pass. Clever and vile indeed. Find whatever forces the Alpha Legion have left in the system. Uncover what they intend, and keep their poison from crippling us. That is what I ask of you, Archamus.’

  ‘You speak of poison. Do you trust me not to succumb to it?’

  Dorn put a hand on Archamus’ shoulder.

  ‘There is no other that it would have pained me more to see take this burden, and no other that I would trust more to see it done.’

  Archamus bowed his head. He suddenly felt very tired.

  ‘I will do this duty for you, lord.’

  ‘Thank you, old friend. This is not the war I raised you to.’

  ‘But I cannot do this alone. I am a warrior and architect, not a hunter of shadows, and I have grown old as both. I will need help.’

  ‘Do what you need to do,’ said Dorn, then fell into a silence.

  The daylight was a molten red-and-yellow blaze beyond the tops of the mountains and the towers of the Palace.

  Archamus shook his head slowly. Dorn glanced up at the movement, eyebrow raised in question.

  ‘Why did they do it this way?’ asked Archamus. ‘Why show their hand? They could have pursued whatever comes next and remained completely undetected. Instead they have shown their presence. It is almost as though they want us to face them, as though they wish the contest.’

  ‘Because this is not about winning,’ said Dorn, his voice suddenly tired. He blinked and ran his fingers across his eyes. ‘It is not about winning, and it never was. It is about pride.’

  Southern refuse sprawl

  Terra

  ‘We will have to go soon,’ grumbled Incarnus. Myzmadra shot him a look, but the savant was staring up at the sky. Around them the cargo lighter buzzed as its engines grumbled in low register.

  ‘We are still within the window,’ said Phocron from the bottom of the ramp. ‘We wait until the allotted time has passed.’

  Incarnus flinched, but did not reply.

  One of the five legionnaires had split off from the team just after they had moved out from the signal tower. None of the others had said anything to him or questioned why he was going, accepting that the lone warrior’s mission was now different from theirs. And just as one of their number left, now they waited for another to join them.

  Myzmadra let out a breath and went back to watching the horizon. The light was draining from the sky, and the layers of pollution were turning the last of it into a molten glow that caught in the tops of the spoil heaps. The skies of Terra were bare. Aircraft and trans-atmospheric shuttles normally sliced the air into shards with the wash from their wings, but now only a few circled in the lower reaches like sullen carrion over a wounded beast. Most of them would be war planes of the Imperial Fists, and its auxilia. Perhaps even the Fire Condors of the Legio Custodes were abroad, watching for prey, ready to strike.

  ‘Whoever it is, they missed the first rendezvous,’ hissed Ashul from the lighter’s cockpit. ‘Got to put their chances at low.’

  ‘There could be any number of reasons for them missing the primary rendezvous,’ replied Myzmadra, watching Phocron carefully. He crouched in the shadow of the lighter’s fuselage, weapon ready, eyes fixed on the folds of the land around them.

  Heaps of refuse extended away in every direction, rising as high as hills, oozing steam into
the dusk air. Streams of fouled liquid ran at the bottom of valleys. Crags of wreckage protruded from the peaks. In the distance the tips of the Himalazia loomed like teeth. The rest of Phocron’s team were scattered across the refuse piles around the lighter, still shapes in the growing gloom.

  ‘Some poor souls live here,’ said Myzmadra, as much to herself as anyone else.

  ‘What?’ asked Incarnus, glancing at her, puzzlement creasing his face.

  ‘There are tribes of people who live out here, thousands of them. Children are born, and grow and die, and believe that the whole universe looks like this.’ She paused. ‘That there is nothing better.’

  ‘And?’ Incarnus arched a hairless eyebrow. She ignored it and did not elaborate. After a minute he rolled his neck, stretched and turned his eyes from her, back to the darkening land.

  ‘Whoever we are waiting for – they aren’t coming,’ he muttered again, and then flinched as the sonic boom of an aircraft rolled over the land. Myzmadra tensed, but the echoes of the jet’s passing faded.

  Flakes of ash and debris stirred in the downdraught as Ashul briefly cycled the engines up. They had picked the lighter up fifty kilometres east of the tower they had attacked. Hidden at the bottom of a gorge, it looked to be made of rust, but it flew just fine. Part of her wondered how long it had been there: months, years, more? She thought of the boxes buried under the surface of the top wastes, but then cut the thoughts off. There was a point at which questions led nowhere useful, or safe. She had learnt that lesson many times over since she had begun her service to the Legion.

  ‘Time’s almost up,’ said Incarnus beside her. ‘Were they mission-critical?’

  She shook her head, and was about to say something when Incarnus straightened, eyes fixed on the dark gathering at the bases of the refuse hills.

  ‘Something is out there,’ he said. ‘I can sense it.’

  Phocron raised his boltgun, the muzzle aimed.