Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  Of all the corners of the Solar System, there were few darker.

  Silonius reflected upon this as he hugged the shadow at the edge of the chamber. The location for the rendezvous was in a part of the tunnel network that had been the base for one of the Mechanicum’s attempts to discover the artefact’s secrets. The structure defied all attempts to bond anything to it, so the tech-priests had threaded plasteel passages and chambers through the black metal tunnels. Smugglers had used it and abandoned it since, but there was still air inside the tunnels. There was no gravity so they had advanced to the chamber with the thump-thump of boots mag-locking to the floor. They were not going deep into the artefact, but even the scant few hundred metres felt like they were walking past an invisible barrier into the unknown.

  Silonius blink-cycled from infra-sight to dark-vision as he moved. The corridors shifted between total black, hazed green and the stark colours of hot and cold. Myzmadra and Incarnus were ahead of him, grey shapes brought alive by the orange of their body heat.

  ‘Nothing on the auspex,’ said Phocron across the vox. The Headhunter Prime was twenty paces behind them. ‘Though this place...’

  ‘I do not like it,’ said Silonius, echoing Phocron’s unvoiced thought. ‘A better sight for a counter-ambush you could not find. There could be anything out there, and we would not see it until it was on top of us.’ Tactical runes fizzed with static in his helmet display as he spoke. The substance of the artefact made them doubly blind.

  ‘Indeed, but that applies to our quarry as much as to us,’ said Phocron.

  Ahead of them, Myzmadra went still and folded into the side of the corridor. Incarnus followed her a second later. Silonius saw the humans’ movement and halted, pivoting and dropping to one knee to cover the passage behind them.

  ‘This looks like the place,’ whispered Myzmadra. ‘No sign of anything.’

  ‘Move into position and wait,’ said Phocron.

  ‘Going firm,’ said Silonius, shifting his position to behind a block of cold machinery, locked to one side of the passage. He flicked a glance over his shoulder to make sure that his sightlines extended cleanly in both directions. He could see Myzmadra and Incarnus crouched next to an opening into a larger chamber beyond. Both were orange-yellow blurs in cold blue. Phocron had vanished, the heat from his armour a smudge in the air.

  Silonius steadied his heartbeats, cycling them down to a low pulse of utter calm. He did not like this. He did not like the fact that they had been drawn here. He understood Phocron’s reasoning and could not fault its logic, but...

  He blinked. The passage in front of him fizzed in its shades of blue and black. A sharp tingle ran up his arms. His fingers suddenly felt like they were locked in ice. He fought not to let out a gasp. Something vast and cold was rising from within him, clawing up the base of his spine until...

  He was moving through the Sigma, the warrior who had come to escort him walking in front of him.

  They passed through the ship, winding through corridors he had not trodden in years, descending bit by bit into the deep regions, where the air tasted of stagnant water and electric charge. There were few lights here; those who tended the machine heart of the ship needed no light to see. Red furnace-light glowed from around corners, and the hammer pulse of reactors trembled through the floor and walls. The route they followed was winding, but not cryptic. He wondered about that even as he memorised each detail. He had a feeling that they were going to somewhere he had never been before, somewhere hidden on the ship he knew so well. That did not surprise him; it was the Legion’s way. What made him wonder was that there was no attempt to conceal the route. That openness held... possibilities.

  He almost missed the moment when they reached their destination. His escort simply opened a hatchway, as he had done twenty-one times already, and they both stepped through. But no corridor waited on the other side. Vastness struck and enfolded him as the hatch clanged shut behind. The sound of magnetic bolts thudding into place rolled through the dark. He turned fast, but his escort was already facing him, bolter raised and steady.

  ‘What is this?’ said Silonius.

  ‘An audience,’ said the warrior.

  Silonius held still. At his back he could feel the space booming against his senses. The air was cool. The smell of dust and weapon oil hung on the edge of every breath. His escort stared at him, the glow of his eyepieces a slash of green in the dark. The hum of active armour pulsed against the sound of his own hearts. Nothing else moved in the chamber.

  ‘Who called me here?’ Silonius growled. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Alpharius,’ said the warrior.

  Myzmadra glanced at Incarnus and moved forwards into the chamber. The blackness rolled back in front of her dark-vision goggles. She could see the nearest wall and the floor sketched in granular blue. Incarnus edged forwards slowly, head twitching as he glanced around. Like her he was wearing a patched void suit. He had a shot-pistol strapped to his thigh, but he kept his hands empty. His gloved fingers opened and closed as he moved, like the feelers of an anemone waving in ocean water.

  She hefted the volkite charger she had brought as she glanced around again. The weapon was big, heavy and could reduce a body to ash in a single shot. She liked it a lot. She didn’t like this mission, though, and she liked the inside of the artefact even less. She could not shake the feeling that she was inside a cage. She wanted to be in cover, to be out of sight, but her job was to be obvious.

  Somewhere off in the dark, Phocron and Silonius would be waiting. Where, she did not know. Like so much about the Legion there was strength in ignorance, even in the smallest things. If there was a problem, then she could not accidentally betray their positions. The element of surprise, supreme in war, would be maintained. She had learned that lesson before she had been recruited. She had always wondered if it was that quality which the Alpha Legion had seen in her. She hoped so. It was a better quality than a willingness to work against the system that had created her.

  ‘Someone is coming,’ Incarnus whispered over the vox.

  She felt her muscles tense and forced them to relax.

  ‘How many?’ she asked.

  ‘Just one, at least I think so.’

  ‘You don’t know so?’

  ‘This place, it–’

  ‘Quiet!’ she hissed, because off in the dark a dot of light had appeared. She flicked the arming switch on her charger. The gun began to buzz with readiness. The dot of light was bobbing in the dark, growing larger. ‘Shine a light,’ she said, quietly. ‘Give them something to come to.’

  Incarnus pulled a flare from a pouch on his suit. It lit with a burst of pink light. He tossed it onto the floor in front of them. Myzmadra’s goggles blanked as they flooded with light and then gave the world back to her. The chamber was bigger now, stretching up to a flat high ceiling. Gantries and hoists sat in the centre of the space, like a forest of metal struts, hung with creepers of chain. A short, fat figure was walking towards them. It had a glow-globe clutched in one hand and was moving with the staggering steps of someone not used to exertion.

  ‘Is it him?’ she asked.

  ‘Can’t tell.’

  ‘Why–’

  ‘He is thinking about the light, and how much he wants to sit down, and...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Water,’ said Incarnus, puzzlement edging in his voice. ‘He isn’t thirsty, but for some reason he is thinking about water.’

  ‘Try harder.’

  ‘I am, but without letting him know what I am doing, that’s not as easy as you might think.’

  She went silent and waited, focusing on keeping her heartbeat level.

  The figure stopped twenty paces from them.

  ‘I...’ said a male voice, that even through a speaker was vibrating with nerves. ‘I am a wanderer in... in... a lost kingdom.’

  S
he paused, her finger on the trigger of her gun.

  The code phrase was the one given in the signal setting up the rendezvous, but that did not mean that this was Hyrakro. If she shot now, and he was watching from further back... She needed to be sure. She glanced at Incarnus, but for some reason the psyker had moved closer to the figure.

  ‘Did you come on a lighter?’ asked Incarnus suddenly. The fat figure with the glow-globe flinched.

  ‘I... I... I am a wanderer in a lost kingdom.’

  ‘I heard you,’ snapped Incarnus, ‘but how did you get here? Where is your shuttle?’

  ‘I...’

  ‘Incarnus, what are you doing?’ she said into the vox.

  ‘Have you confirmed the target’s identity?’ Phocron’s voice broke into the vox.

  ‘Where is your shuttle?’

  The man was backing away from Incarnus. The globe was shaking in his grip. He glanced behind him.

  Cold snapped through Myzmadra’s nerves. In her mind the man turned to look back into the dark behind him in exquisite and terrifying slowness. Her finger tensed on the trigger of her charger.

  ‘Have you confirmed the identity–’

  Myzmadra spoke the answer to the code phrase, the words echoing loud in the dark emptiness. ‘I am a guardian of a forgotten city. You stand at the gates, traveller.’

  The man with the glow-globe froze in place. She could see his eyes wide and dark behind his void suit visor. His mouth began to open to reply.

  ‘No!’ shouted Incarnus, and suddenly the psyker was leaping forwards. Myzmadra began to bring her gun up, but the psyker was fast, faster than she had ever seen him move before. And suddenly her muscles were lead, and there was frost exploding across her visor, as she felt Incarnus’ will clamping over her own.

  ‘They are going to kill you,’ Incarnus was shouting. ‘Get us to your shuttle. Run! Now!’

  Then blinding light stole the world from her eyes.

  ‘I am Alpharius,’ said the warrior in the dream.

  Silonius laughed, the sound booming in the dark of the chamber. The warrior in front of him lowered his weapon and reached up to release his helm.

  The light in the eyepiece vanished. The helmet came free. Silonius met the eyes beneath and knelt, head bowed.

  ‘Lord,’ said Silonius, and now it was Alpharius’ laughter that echoed in the empty air.

  ‘Rise,’ said the primarch. ‘My method of summoning you rather undermines the need for formality, do you not think?’

  Silonius rose and met Alpharius’ eyes, dark in a still face. A spark of doubt filled his mind. There were many within the Legion who bore the deliberate likeness of the primarch, some of them so exact in their appearance that only prolonged observation might reveal the deception. Silonius himself was one such individual, but there were hundreds of others. Then there was the fact that Alpharius was only one face of a coin with two sides, though few outsiders knew it. Lord Omegon was not just the same in looks as his twin, but identical in his superhuman nature. Added to this was the fact that both primarchs and their legionnaires often bore the name Alpharius as a form of grim jest combined with a method of sowing confusion. True, he had felt a twinge of command the moment he looked on his summoner’s face, but did that mean this was truly his primarch?

  He forced the doubts down.

  ‘How may I serve?’ Silonius asked Alpharius. Around him the vast darkness of the chamber trembled as some distant machine woke and sent a shudder through the Sigma’s hull. The beat of his hearts seemed to rise to the distant sound, as the doubt needled in his mind, persistent and shrill.

  Is this a lie?

  Alpharius was silent for a second, then stepped past Silonius into the space beyond. Shafts of light appeared in the dark, marching away into the far reaches of the chamber.

  Silonius saw objects sitting on plinths in each pool of light. A set of four rings sat on top of an obsidian pillar at the centre of the nearest shaft. Branching marks ran between green gems circling each ring. In another sat a pauldron, the rearing hydra of the Legion worked in bronze on a field of enamelled blue scales. Further off he could see more fragments of armour and weapons, each glimmering and brilliant.

  ‘You doubt it is truly me, when before you were so certain,’ Alpharius said, and smiled, but his eyes were still and unblinking. ‘An understandable reaction. Do you know what this is?’ He gestured at the object in one of the pillars of light. It was a spear, as tall as a mortal man, both ends capped with blades whose edges glinted sharply. Serpentine bodies wound across the black of the shaft in golden inlay. Silonius knew what it was, and if he had any doubts as to the truth of Alpharius’ presence, they should have vanished at that moment. But the doubts lingered.

  ‘It is the Sarrisanata, the Pale Spear,’ he said, ‘symbol of our mastery of war, the hydra’s tooth, the weapon of our true heart.’ He looked at Alpharius. ‘Your weapon.’

  The primarch reached into the shaft of light and plucked the spear from its stand. He spun it as he stepped back, the gesture so smooth and fast that it made no sound. He held the spear up with one hand. The tip of one of the blades was a finger’s width from Silonius’ face. The primarch looked at Silonius from the other end of the spear.

  Neither moved.

  Then the spear spun back. Alpharius held it up again, this time with both hands gripping the haft. He twisted, and a series of clicks sounded, like the murmur of a dozen tiny locks all turning at once. He twisted again, hands a brief blur. The clicks rippled on, and then there was a single, loud crack. The blades unlocked from the shafts broke into shards, each a razor sliver that gave no hint of the whole it had once been part of. The spear shaft split, once, twice, three times. Alpharius placed each piece on the empty stand as it came free. The whole process had taken only three seconds.

  ‘And now?’ asked Alpharius. ‘What is it now?’

  ‘It is still the spear,’ replied Silonius, without hesitation.

  Alpharius gave a small nod and then picked up one of the blade shards, and handed it to Silonius.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘It is still the spear. No matter how many times it is broken, it is still the spear.’

  Alpharius nodded. It was an old lesson explained in many ways, and put into practice in many more.

  ‘A whole of many parts, a weapon of many parts, but which can come together. The many that are one.’

  For a moment, Silonius thought the primarch was going to emphasise the point by rebuilding the spear, but he picked up another splinter of the blade. Alpharius lifted the sliver in his right hand and flexed his left. The gauntlet peeled back from the flesh beneath with a series of soft clicks. Silonius watched in silence, wondering what was happening. Alpharius looked at the bare flesh, then sliced the shard across the tip of one finger. A bead of blood formed in the instant before the wound closed. Alpharius scraped the blood from his fingertip with the blade shard and held it out to Silonius, a red pearl balanced on gold.

  ‘We wear lies as our armour, but the greater the deception the more we must trust one another.’

  Silonius looked at the tiny sphere of blood and understood. He reached out and took the shard. It felt like a feather in his hand. He brought it to his lips. Alpharius’ eyes were steady on his. He touched the blood drop to his tongue and swallowed.

  He gasped, reeling, fighting to breathe. Partial memories exploded in his mind: the image of a long stone hall and three figures turning to look at him, a man shouting one word at him the second before a bolt ripped him apart, and then the glowing explosion that might have been pain, or birth, or revelation. And on and on in a rush of glimpses and sensations. The moment passed, and Silonius found himself on his hands and knees. The deck of the ship twisted one last time beneath him and then was still. He looked up, breathing hard.

  ‘I do not think that separating truth from seeming
was what my father intended when He implanted His Legions with the ability to glimpse the minds of others by tasting their blood.’ Alpharius smiled, and this time his eyes glittered with cold amusement. ‘But it is a useful side effect.’

  ‘Lord...’ began Silonius, but Alpharius cut him off by reaching down and pulling him to his feet.

  ‘It has been a while, Harrowmaster,’ said the primarch. ‘Your suspicion does you more credit than credulity would have.’

  Silonius felt pride and caution surge and retreat in his hearts.

  ‘Why am I here, lord? Why did you summon me?’

  And the answer fell away into the present with a roar of gunfire.

  Stark, white light was pouring down the passage from the direction of the rendezvous chamber. Silonius’ mind was rolling with scraps of sight and sound.

  ‘I am Alpharius.’

  ‘How may I serve?’

  Silonius ran down the passage and the ghosts of the past followed him.

  Myzmadra felt Incarnus’ hold on her will break, and she dived to her right. A burst of bolter fire ripped through where she had been standing. She rolled and came up. Frost still covered her visor, shining white in brilliant light. She hit the helmet release and yanked it free. Beams of light sliced across the chamber. She could see figures pouring out of doors at the other end, figures in power armour. Yellow armour, laurels and black lightning haloing the emblem of clenched fists. The sons of Rogal Dorn had found them.

  Incarnus was fifteen paces away, clutching Hyrakro and shouting something that she could not hear. She brought her charger up and fired. The beam flashed wide. One of the Imperial Fists turned to look at her, boltgun rising at the same moment. Her augmented reflexes snapped her aside as the bolt exploded where she had been. She dived for a coil of chains at the base of a gantry as the burst of fire followed her. She came up behind the cover and snapped a shot off.