Praetorian of Dorn

by John French

  ‘Tell them to pursue as far as they can,’ he said. ‘But tell the Luna witch that we have another thread for her to unravel.’ Kestros saluted. Archamus acknowledged it with a nod, and then stared at the unconscious man’s pale eyelids, now closed over eyes that had fastened on Archamus with something like hope. ‘We may not need to chase them down to end this hunt,’ he said, as much to himself as anyone else.

  Four

  Memory

  Alpharius watched Silonius in silence.

  ‘Why are you here?’ the primarch said at last, and gave a smile that had no echo in his eyes. ‘You are here because we have a duty for you, a very particular duty. We were preparing for this war before it began. We have moved within the circles of conflict, sowing our own seeds and shaping the victory that will come.’ He stopped. ‘But things have changed. We are the masters of confusion, but now we reach a tipping point.’ Alpharius paused and reached out to place the sliver of blade in his hand back with the rest of the broken spear on the plinth beneath the light.

  ‘We are in the last stages of this war,’ he continued. ‘All the blood scattered on the ground, all the battles won and lost for advantage will soon become the past. Horus is going to move to take Terra. The day long promised is waiting just beyond the present.’ Silonius blinked, unsure whether he was more shocked to hear the Warmaster’s name used with familial ease, or the revelation that the final gambit of the war was so close. ‘His road has been long, but he is coming, and he will not be stopped. That possibility has long passed.’

  ‘What does that mean for the Legion, lord?’

  ‘It means that we have a choice. We can either stand aside, or we can act.’

  Silonius frowned. ‘I sense that the choice might also have passed.’

  Alpharius looked at him for a long moment and then nodded.

  ‘We have begun. The domains of Terra already burn, and the darkness grows around Rogal in his fortress. He will have noticed, I am sure, but he will be thinking in terms of grand assaults, of millions coming from the stars to break against his wall.’ Alpharius smiled again, and the cold stillness was in his eyes once more. ‘Too simple in vision, too burdened by duty, too strong without understanding strength – those were always his weaknesses. He could stand against whatever horde the others could throw at him, and fight and win even as he was drowned in blood. But there are other ways and other weapons.’ Alpharius paused, his eyes going back to the deconstructed spear. ‘His defences are flawed, and he does not even see how.’

  ‘We are going to Terra,’ said Silonius. It was a statement, not a question, and fell from his lips with flat certainty.

  Alpharius shook his head.

  ‘We are already on Terra. We are in the Solar System. We always have been. But there is more, much more. We are going to wound Dorn and his honoured sons. We are going to humble them and strip the ground of certainty from beneath their feet.’

  ‘And then, lord? What then?’

  ‘I offer my brother a choice,’ Alpharius said, and turned away.

  ‘And what is the victory we seek?’

  Alpharius shot him a sharp look. ‘We have already won, Silonius. We won years ago. It is merely a question of the shape of that victory.’

  Silence followed those words. Silonius spoke at last.

  ‘And my part in this, lord?’

  ‘Someone needs to be there,’ said Alpharius. ‘Someone needs to go to Terra to begin this. And to see it end.’

  Imperial Fists frigate Unbreakable Truth

  The solar void

  ‘He should be awake now.’

  Incarnus heard the voice from behind a grey fog. Everything was warm, soft, numb. He tried to reach out with his mind, but recoiled as a sharp spike of pain flashed through the fog like a fork of black lightning.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no...’ said the voice. ‘You really shouldn’t do that. Not if you don’t want the pain to split your skull. Open your eyes, if you can.’

  The pain still clinging to the inside of his skull, Incarnus willed his eyes open. They moved sluggishly, and the world became a watery blur of shapes. He could feel cold metal circling his neck, wrist and shins. The burned stump of his arm was strapped across his chest.

  ‘Hold still,’ said the voice, and he blinked rapidly as jets of liquid washed his eyes. After a second he found that his sight had cleared. ‘There,’ said the voice, and he saw that it belonged to a young human female with a pale face framed by braided chrome hair. He noted the red circle tattooed under her left eye and blinked again in surprise. ‘Now at least you should be able to appreciate your circumstances,’ she said, and stepped back. Behind her stood two Space Marines in the gold-and-black heraldry of the Imperial Fists. Both had their helmets on and were staring at him with unmoving glowing green eyes. He saw that one was the same warrior he had seen before... before he had fallen into nothing.

  He swallowed.

  The girl smiled.

  ‘I am advised that the device attached to your skull can detect if you attempt to use your witch gift, and will reward any such attempt with an excess of pain. Unless that is something you desire, I suggest you keep your thoughts inside your skull.’

  ‘You...’ he said, feeling his tongue move sluggishly. ‘You are one of the Selenar.’

  The girl’s smile did not falter.

  ‘Well done. And you... I had thought that none of your kind remained.’

  ‘We... I found a way to survive,’ he replied, the words rasping from his lips.

  ‘By agreeing to serve the Alpha Legion in return for protection, yes?’

  ‘At least...’ he hissed. ‘At least we didn’t sell ourselves to barbarians and worshippers of ignorance.’

  ‘No, you chose traitors and deceivers instead.’

  The Imperial Fist who bore the marks of a sergeant shifted, and the girl flicked a glance at him.

  ‘He is a Crimson Walker,’ she said. ‘One of the last in all likelihood.’

  ‘I know of them,’ said the cloaked warrior without looking away from Incarnus. ‘They were witch-breed, gene-mutilators and techno mystics. The warlords and monarchs of Old Night used them as viziers and advisers, and they returned the favour by creating machines and monsters for them. They were exterminated decades ago.’

  ‘But extermination is rarely perfect,’ the girl said, and looked directly at Incarnus.

  ‘I want...’ said Incarnus. ‘I want sanctuary.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘I am afraid...’

  ‘Begin telling us something that will help us,’ said the girl.

  ‘They are...’ he breathed. ‘The attacks on Terra... were not without purpose.’

  ‘To cloud our minds with doubt and shadows, to seed fear in the ranks of the loyal,’ said the cloaked Imperial Fist. ‘That was their purpose, and in that they have failed.’

  ‘Have they?’ Incarnus asked, and licked his lips. The numbness in his mind and body was fading. A ghost throb in his vaporised arm was replacing the pain of the psy-clamp. Things had not gone as he had planned. He had hoped to flee back into the diaspora of lawlessness that existed in the voids of the Solar System and vanish from sight. Now he was in the hands of the Imperium, and facing their judgement for both his nature and his alliance to the Legion. There was a chance of survival, though, a slim desperate hope. He had to give everything he knew and hope that it would buy mercy. The Selenar girl knew that, he could tell.

  ‘The Legion does not operate with simple objectives,’ he said. ‘It has parameters, volumes of possibility in which there are many potential victories and outcomes. The erosion of your spirit was only one of the possible objectives of the strikes on Terra. It was not the primary objective.’

  He paused. In his mind he saw the face of Silonius, its features the mirror of Phocron’s face.

  ‘What was the object
ive?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Information,’ he said. ‘You have traitors in your midst, eyes and ears which watch and listen for the Legion. They have been there for a long time.’

  ‘The agents of the Sigillite have eliminated–’ the sergeant began.

  ‘Have found the chaff sent by Horus’ other allies. The Legion is neither clumsy, nor amateurish, and they have had longer to prepare than you suspect. This thing they are doing, it is... It is beautiful.’

  ‘You admire those you claim to want to betray out of fear?’ said the girl. ‘How thoroughly paradoxical of you.’

  ‘I hate and fear them,’ he said, ‘but you have to admire their abilities, don’t you?’ None of them replied. He licked his lips, feeling his tongue moving more easily with every word. ‘The Legion’s agents are not deluded sympathisers, or naïve ideologues. They are not new converts to rebellion. They have been in place for years. Some of them do not even know who they serve.’

  ‘Who are these traitors?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘I do not know, and anyway their identities do not matter – only their existence matters. You see, alone, each of them has only a narrow view of events. But if focused on a single event, those eyes and ears form an image.’

  ‘And that is what they created,’ said the Imperial Fist in the cloak. ‘A single point of focus.’ Incarnus thought he heard an edge of bitter realisation in the warrior’s voice.

  ‘We attacked, and they watched. They watched which forces moved and those that did not. They saw how you controlled information, they watched how you isolated a threat. They saw your soul, praetorians.’

  ‘And the information from all of those sources?’ asked the girl. Her eyes had a hard, intense focus to them.

  ‘Collected, compiled.’

  ‘Where is it?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Gone,’ he replied. ‘Sent out into the darkness.’

  ‘To Horus,’ said the uncloaked Imperial Fist.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is what I thought at first, but they are jealous creatures. Information is a weapon, and they intend to use that weapon themselves.’

  ‘What...’ began the girl, but Incarnus cut through her with the word that he had been readying since he had started talking.

  ‘A Harrowing,’ he said.

  The girl blinked, eyes briefly flaring wide.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘It is not theirs,’ said the cloaked Imperial Fist. ‘It was a term that came out of the wars of Unity, long before they made it their own. Then it meant an attack with overwhelming force, delivered after a time in which the enemy’s ability to respond has been undermined, its defences eroded and its strengths neutralised. Destruction in detail.’

  Incarnus forced himself to nod. The bolts of the psy-clamp dug into his scalp as he moved.

  ‘Yes, that is what it means, and it is coming.’

  ‘That is ludicrous,’ said the sergeant. ‘This is the Solar System. Even the full strength of the Alpha Legion...’

  ‘Does more than one Legion stand beside you?’ spat Incarnus. He needed them to believe. He needed them to see the truth of what he was telling them. ‘Are you so strong that a thousand of you could stand against ten thousand? And what makes you believe they will give you that luxury? You are masters of defence, but they have assayed those defences. They have planned a counter to each one of your advantages.’

  ‘He is right,’ breathed the girl. ‘Remember they do not account victory in the way you do, or even most do. They do not have to take Terra. The Solar System is already at war. How long will it stand against Horus if its outer spheres are in enemy hands, or half of its guardians slaughtered?’

  ‘What is the shape of this Harrowing?’ asked the cloaked Imperial Fist, taking a step closer. Incarnus felt his skin prickle, and the moisture seemed to dry on his tongue. Control and brutality seemed to seep from the warrior.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Incarnus, carefully. ‘I do not think that the team I was a part of knew. That is the way of the Legion – secrets and lies are the air they breathe, and they hide things even from themselves.’

  The Imperial Fist did not move, and Incarnus suddenly thought of the figure of Silonius staring back at him from the dark.

  ‘Part of it will come from outside of the Solar System, and soon,’ he said quickly. ‘The signal they sent, it was aimed into the outer dark, and if it was to be received and acted on, then the receiver would have to be close.’

  ‘What other preparations have they made?’

  ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘But there was another signal. I do not know what it was, but it was sent within the Solar System, and the one who sent it hid it from all of the rest.’

  ‘They hide things even from themselves...’ the sergeant said, and glanced at the other Imperial Fist. Incarnus licked his lips. He had them, and he could feel that his chance of survival was close. He just had to make them understand the last thing he had to tell them, the most difficult thing, and the thing that had frightened him enough to make him start to think about finding a way out.

  ‘The one who sent that extra signal...’ he said, the words forming slowly in his mouth. ‘He joined us on Terra. He seemed to just slide into the fabric of the team, like he was not there, but he was always there, on the edge of things, and... I looked into his mind, just the surface, but that was... incomplete, as though most of it was asleep.’

  ‘Asleep?’ asked the girl, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Asleep, suppressed, hidden from itself,’ he said.

  She nodded slowly.

  ‘Psychic reconstruction,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Exactly that.’

  The girl looked at the Imperial Fists as though hearing a question that had not yet been asked.

  ‘A mind can be reshaped, parts of it suppressed and cut off from consciousness,’ she said. ‘In Old Night, warlords would use what they called sorcery to implant an assassin’s soul into the mind of someone close to their enemies. It also serves as a very effective means of preserving a secret.’

  ‘What purpose beside paranoia would that serve?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘If this legionnaire knew something valuable then they would want it protected from discovery, either accidental or by that mind being violated.’ She gestured at Incarnus. ‘Given the current circumstances, their paranoia had grounds.’

  ‘What could be so vital that they would go to those lengths?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘What was his name?’ asked the cloaked Imperial Fist. ‘The legionnaire whose mind had been... altered, what was his name?’

  ‘He was called Silonius,’ Incarnus said, and felt cold run over his skin as he spoke the words. ‘He believed that was his name. But that is it... That belief... I think that belief was a lie.’

  Battle-barge Alpha

  The interstellar gulf beyond the light of Sol

  The signal had passed out of the Solar System with the light of the system’s star. Out in the gulf between stars, it touched the signal array high on the spine of the battle-barge Alpha and began to pour its meaning into the ship’s systems. On the bridge, the figure on the throne was brought to full wakefulness by the clatter of machines. The trio of Lernaean Terminators at the throne’s foot did not move from their position.

  The figure waited, listening to the signal servitors clatter and buzz. Once they were silent, he spoke.

  ‘Show it to me,’ he said. The servitors heard, and twitched as they complied with the command.

  Cones of projected light sprang from holo-projectors suspended above the throne. Images moved before the enthroned warrior, planets and ships, and streams of information in words and symbol systems that none outside of the Alpha Legion would understand. There were words too, voices scratching with signal degradation and decryption distortion. They sp
oke as the images moved, and he watched as the Solar System’s defences responded to the first attacks on Terra. It was all there – the Praetorian’s defences not only visible, but moving, responding to threat. There were holes of course, areas where agents or data siphons had not been able to gather intelligence, or only a partial impression. But it was still a beautiful and terrible thing to behold.

  ‘Truly, the doom of empires is not in the strength of warriors, but in their weakness,’ he whispered to himself, and then raised his voice. ‘Bring the commanders to full waking, and signal the rest of the fleet to connect for conclave within the hour.’ The Lernaeans heard and obeyed.

  An hour later a hundred figures filled the dark space before the command throne. Many were present in body, but many others were holo-projections of those who stood in the strategiums and on the bridges of the other ships tumbling through the void beside the Alpha. The cold light of the ghost images gleamed off the armour plate of their brothers. They all watched and listened in silence as the intelligence from within the Solar System unfolded before them.

  It was Ingo Pech who broke the silence. The hulking First Captain raised an eyebrow and looked around at his brothers.

  ‘Dorn took the bait,’ he breathed.

  ‘And had the courtesy to show us his hand before quitting the field,’ said Herzog from his side.

  ‘Was there any doubt of either?’ asked Pech.

  ‘The Praetorian is no fool,’ said Herzog. ‘This was a delicate operation...’

  ‘It still is a delicate operation,’ said the warrior, from his place on the command throne. The eyes of those assembled went to him, and silence fell instantly. The Legion was a fluid beast, mutable and filled with paradoxes of structure and authority, but one quality allowed them that freedom: discipline. Cold and sharp.

  And so now every one of the senior commanders assembled beneath him waited to hear his will and obey his command.

  ‘Rogal Dorn has left the Solar System. But his sons still remain. The ground is prepared for the Harrowing, but we still need to lay the blade to it. You have all seen the detail of the battlefield. Current projections put us on intercept within Pluto’s orbit as planned. Within one hour you will give your tactical assessments and mission parameters for the forces under your command.’ He paused and felt a smile form on his face, a face that was the mirror of many that looked up at him.